Covid-19: French health body recommends delaying second shot to six weeks after first

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AFP
AFP

The gap between the first and second injection in France is currently three weeks for people in retirement homes.

By Agencies

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Published: Sat 23 Jan 2021, 9:26 PM

The UK and France are planning to space out the time between the two doses of the coronavirus vaccine so as to make it available to a larger number of people.

France’s top health advisory body on Saturday recommended doubling the time between people being given the first and second vaccinations to six weeks from three in order to increase the number getting inoculated.


The gap between the first and second injection in France is currently three weeks for people in retirement homes, who take priority, and four weeks for others such as health workers.

The Haute Autorite de Sante said spacing out the two vaccinations of the Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna vaccines would allow the treatment of at least 700,000 more people in the first month.


The UK, which has Europe’s deadliest Covid outbreak, also adopted a policy to give people second dose of the Pfizer vaccine up to 12 weeks after the first, rather than the shorter gap recommended by the manufacturer and the World Health Organisation.

So far almost 5.5 million people have received a shot of either a vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech or one developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.


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