How many weeks between Pfizer vaccine doses in France?

Reader question: The UK recommends 12 weeks between doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. What does France recommend and are many people now getting second doses in France?

The UK has chosen to delay giving a second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine by up to 12 weeks in order to be able to administer more first doses.

France has chosen to stick to the recommended three-four week interval initially advised by Pfizer-BioNTech.

Uğur Şahin, the CEO of BioNTech, has now said that he would be comfortable delaying the second dose by up to six weeks, but no longer.

“As a scientist, I wouldn’t mind if the second dose of the vaccine is given three weeks, four weeks, maybe five weeks, even up to six weeks might still be okay,” he told Sky News on February 12.

“But I wouldn’t delay that further. As a scientist I believe that it is not good to go longer than six weeks.”

French health authority the Haute Autorité de Santé did recommend extending the period between Covid-19 vaccine doses to six weeks for both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in January.

However, the French government decided to continue with the shorter timeframe.

More second doses administered in France

France has now overtaken the UK in the number of second doses of a vaccine it has delivered.

As of February 12, France has administered 617,715 second doses of a Covid-19 vaccine while the UK has administered 530,094.

In total, the UK has delivered 14,542,318 Covid-19 vaccination doses and France has delivered around 2,840,000.

The UK began its vaccination rollout on December 8, 2020 and France began on December 27, 2020.

Read more:

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France sticks with shorter Covid-19 vaccine dosage dates