Moderna vaccine not recommended as 3rd dose, HAS explains – The HuffPost

Dado Ruvic / Reuters

CORONAVIRUS – The news surprised more than one this Friday, October 15. In an opinion that has not been commented on by any high-ranking health official, the High Authority of Health explained to advise against the use of the vaccine against Covid of Moderna as a third dose.

In question, waiting for the conclusions of a study conducted by European Medicines Agency as to the effectiveness of this serum working thanks to the technology of messenger RNA. But not only.

Indeed, as explained in the columns of Sunday Newspaper of this October 17 the president of the High Authority of Health Dominique le Gudulec, it is the fact that the health situation is from now on “under control” which pushes the HAS to want to return to the “normal rules”.

An alert from the north

Because usually, the independent body still awaits the marketing authorization of the European institution to decide. A habit from which she has departed recently in the face of the need to intensify the vaccination campaign.

In addition, an alert has arrived from the Scandinavian countries in recent days. In northern Europe (Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark), it was decided last week to no longer recommend Moderna’s vaccine to young people under 30 years of age due to a few cases of heart inflammation “which remain very rare, never fatal and treatable well ”(myocarditis and pericarditis) detected in young men.

Now “that 20 or 30-year-old health professionals can have access to a third dose”, Dominique le Gudulec therefore says he wants to be absolutely certain before recommending the use of Moderna’s product for this purpose. “We want to be sure that there are no contraindications, and therefore a real benefit compared to the risk, in these young people for whom Covid-19 is generally benign.”

Clearly, a decision that can be explained by the desire – in a context of a health lull – to want to avoid any risk taking and to ensure its legal backs.

See also on the HuffPost: Why Covid tests have been paid for since October 15