The anti-Covid vaccination dashboard

The Moderna vaccine stored in the super freezer of the pharmacy at the Emile Muller hospital, in Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin). (Credit: Sébastien Bozon / AFP)

Today’s news

EFPIA, Vaccines Europe, IFPMA … The main associations of the European and American pharmaceutical industry call on governments not to play sorcerer’s apprenticeship with anti-Covid-19 vaccines, while several countries are tempted to increase the duration between the two doses to be injected or change the dose of vaccines, to deal with the lack of stocks.

Number of people vaccinated in France

Since December 26, 2020 (to January 13, 2021): 247,167 people

Breakdown by region

(Source: Directorate General of Health, January 13, 2021)

How France is positioned on a global scale

The stages of the vaccination schedule in France

Can currently be vaccinated:

• Elderly people in EHPAD or in long-term care unit;

• all caregivers over 50 or with co-morbidities;

• firefighters over 50 years of age or with co-morbidities;

• home helpers over 50 or with co-morbidities;

• vulnerable disabled people cared for in nursing homes and specialized homes.

From Thursday January 14: registrations for those over 75, for a vaccination from January 18. Online at: Doctolib, Maiia and Keldoc.

Vaccines authorized in France

Moderna since January 8

Pfizer-Biotech since December 24

French factories already mobilized

If the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is currently produced in Belgium, in Pfizer’s Puurs plant, it will also be able to count from April on a French manufacture. The French pharmaceutical subcontractor Delpharm had indeed obtained in November 2020 a contract with BioNTech for the filling of several tens of millions of doses, on its site of Saint-Rémy-Sur-Avre (Eure-et-Loir).

Moderna has entrusted the Swedish group Recipharm, one of the main pharmaceutical subcontractors in Europe, with the formulation and filling-finishing operations of the first vaccines. They will take place in France “during the first half of 2021”, at the Recipharm de Monts site (Indre-et-Loire), a former AstraZeneca factory.

Another SME located in France will be involved in the manufacture of Moderna doses. The Chenôve site (Côte-d’Or), owned by the Swiss subcontractor CordenPharma, must supply lipid excipients, a molecule used in the composition of Moderna’s vaccine.

The different vaccine technologies

Inactivated, recombinant protein, messenger RNA or GMO … L’Usine Nouvelle disentangles here the true from the false on the four main technologies used to develop these anti-Covid-19 vaccines.

The classic killed or inactivated vaccine

Used by Chinese laboratories Sinopharm and Sinovac

Recombinant proteins

Used by the French Sanofi, allied to its English competitor GSK

Messenger RNA

Used by Pfizer and BioNTech, but also by Moderna

Genetic vaccines

The DNA vaccine is being tested by the French organization Institut Pasteur. Recombinant live vaccines are used by the American Janssen (a subsidiary of J&J) and the Anglo-Swedish AstraZeneca.