PARIS (Reuters) – France’s top health advisory body on Saturday recommended doubling the time between people receiving the first and second vaccines COVID-19 from three to six weeks in order to increase the number of vaccines.
The difference between the first and the second injection in France is currently three weeks for people in nursing homes, which have priority, and four weeks for others, as health professionals.
Haute Autorite de Sante (HAS) said that the spacing of the two vaccinations required for the Pfizer / BioNtech and Moderna vaccines would allow at least 700,000 more people to be treated in the first month.
“The growing number of infections and the worrying arrival of new variants require an acceleration of the vaccination campaign to prevent the epidemic from escalating in the coming weeks,” HAS said in a statement.
The HAS said that, although there was no agreement between different countries on the ideal time interval between the two injections, it seemed reasonable to delay the second injection to six weeks, as the first injection would already provide protection against the coronavirus from the 12th or the 14th day after the injection.
He added that it is essential that people receive a second injection.
HAS is an independent advisory body whose recommendations can inspire government policies, but do not automatically translate into actions.
The World Health Organization said earlier this month that people should receive two doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine within 21 to 28 days.
Several countries are considering ways to stretch scarce supplies of COVID-19 vaccines, including delaying dose intervals or reducing dose sizes.
In Britain, regulators have determined that vaccines can be administered up to 12 weeks apart, although a group of British doctors has written to the British medical director to tell him to shorten the interval between doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine for six weeks.
Pfizer and BioNTech have warned that they have no evidence that the vaccine would continue to be protective if the second dose was administered more than 21 days after the first.
(Reporting by Geert De Clercq and Caroline Pailliez; Editing by David Holmes)