The question is, in the opinion of François Braun, "thorny". This is why the Minister of Health announced, last week in the Senate, the referral to several authorities to answer it: should we, or not, reintegrate non-vaccinated caregivers? Thursday, while they were studying the health bill in a joint joint committee, the deputies and senators voted two measures absent from the first version of the text: the possibility for the government to restore a virological test control at the entrance on the national territory, and that of reintegrating unvaccinated caregivers. This last provision, however, can only be activated if the High Authority for Health (HAS) gives its consent. What she didn't do.
In an opinion issued this Friday morning, the HAS said it was "in favor of maintaining the obligation to vaccinate against Covid-19 for people working in health and medico-social establishments". The instance raises two main arguments. The first: "the current context marked by a new epidemic wave due to the BA.5 sub-lineage of the Omicron variant". If the peak of the contaminations of the seventh wave has passed, the HAS recalls that the incidence rate "remains at a very high level, with a marked increase in hospital admissions and deaths".
Second argument: the importance - and safety - of vaccination in the fight against the epidemic. Even if the vaccines have largely lost their effectiveness against contamination, it has not completely disappeared, in particular in the months following a booster dose, judges the authority. "The vaccine protection is between 45% and 55% against symptomatic infections and around 80% against severe forms in the three months following its injection", she writes.
In a previous opinion issued in July 2021, the HAS considered "that the vaccination coverage of healthcare professionals, and more broadly of those who have frequent and close contact with vulnerable people, was an ethical issue as much as a public health issue". She had thus justified the inclusion of the obligation to vaccinate caregivers in the bill. Since last year, doctors, nurses, and other staff working in hospitals or nursing homes have been required to be vaccinated against Covid-19. A minority number of carers, who refused to be, have since been banned from working. Their return is therefore not expected immediately.
