Emmanuel Macron will chair a new Health Defense Council this morning. In particular, the third dose of the vaccine and the monitoring of operations in Guadeloupe and Martinique will be discussed.
Still on vacation at Fort Brégançon, the President of the Republic will organize this inter-ministerial meeting by videoconference. The opportunity for the overseas minister, Sébastien Lecornu, to participate while following the situation in the West Indies, where yesterday he began a “crisis visit” in the face of the rebound in the epidemic.
Before flying to the other side of the Atlantic, Sébastien Lecornu spoke of an “extremely serious” situation, with incidence rates “never known before”. As a result, it has already announced a tightening of “emergency braking measures”. The decision must be made this Wednesday, at the end of the Health Defense Council.
In addition to monitoring the epidemic in the West Indies, the president should take advantage of this Defense Council to discuss the establishment of a third injection of Covid-19 vaccine. Last week, the Head of State confirmed that this third dose “probably” will be offered “at the beginning of the school year” for “the oldest and most fragile.”
This Defense Council should make it possible, in particular, to specify the age categories and profiles affected by this vaccination booster. On Tuesday, August 3, the Ministry of Health had called an arbitration “next week”, that is to say this week.
Meanwhile, however, the World Health Organization has called for a “moratorium” on third-dose injections. The institution believes that the delay in vaccination between poor countries and rich countries is too great and that the latter must wait “at least until the end of September” to administer the third doses, in order to try to restore an appearance of “balance” .
Beyond the target audiences, the executive could, therefore, study a new schedule for this booster of the vaccine, which is supposed to increase the immune reflexes of the most fragile people.