Should I get the French Covid booster dose if I had Janssen vaccine?
Data suggests that the Janssen jab may not offer long-term protection against the Delta variant
Data from the French Haute autorité de santé suggests that the Janssen jab may not offer long-term protection against the Delta variant
Viacheslav Lopatin / Shutterstock
I've had the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in France and now read it is not perhaps as effective: Should I get a booster jab as priority? How do I do this?
People aged 18-64 are eligible to receive the Covid vaccine booster dose if they were initially injected with the single-dose Johnson & Johnson Janssen vaccine, according to the French government website.
This is according to advice from the French health service quality regulator, the Haute autorité de santé (HAS), which was published at the end of August.
“HAS recommends that people who received the single-dose Janssen vaccine get a booster dose of a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine such as Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna at least four weeks after their first injection,” it said.
“Data shows that a single dose of the other vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna or AstraZeneca), does not offer sufficient protection against symptomatic forms of Covid linked to the Delta variant.
“With the data available, it is impossible to confirm the long-term efficacy of the single-dose Janssen vaccine against the Delta variant.”
Read more: French study raises concerns over Johnson & Johnson vaccine 'failures'
People receiving a booster dose will be injected either with the Pfizer or the Moderna vaccine, which have both proved to be “very effective against serious forms of Covid, including those linked to the Delta variant.”
Adults who were initially inoculated with the Janssen vaccine can receive their booster dose from their GP, a nurse, a pharmacy or a vaccination centre.
They can book appointments through an online platform such as santé.fr or doctolib.fr, or by ringing 0800 009 110 between 06:00 and 22:00 every day of the week.
Other population groups who are eligible for the booster dose, which began to be rolled out on September 1, include:
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