The Minister of Health Franck Vandenbroucke will study a possible adaptation of the vaccination program

Federal Minister of Health Frank Vandenbroucke (sp.a) will submit for medical and legal analysis a possible adaptation of the Belgian vaccination program concerning the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, he indicated on Radio 1 on Monday ( VRT).

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Faced with the concern generated by the dispersion of the “British” variant of Sars-CoV-2, some scientists believe that it would be better to administer a single dose of the vaccine to as many people as possible as quickly as possible, rather than in two installments, as planned for the moment.

According to them, the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, whose availability will still be quite limited at the start of the year in Belgium, offers sufficient protection in the short term, which makes it possible to postpone the second injection until later. Such a choice would therefore make it possible to inoculate twice as many people in the short term, they argue.

Asked Monday morning about this possibility, Minister Vandenbroucke specified that there was at this stage no scientific consensus on this subject. “I asked our taskforce in charge of the vaccination strategy to study this from a medical point of view,” he commented.

It also instructed the Federal Agency for Medicines and Health Products (FAMHP) to analyze from a legal point of view a possible adaptation of the vaccination strategy, and its compatibility with the European regulatory framework in terms of approval. vaccines. “Imagine the doctors saying that it would be good to adapt the vaccination schedule. What should we do then vis-à-vis the European Union, which is authoritative in this area ”, underlined Mr Vandenbroucke.

Unlike the medical analysis which will have to go through quantities of scientific documents, the legal study could go rather quickly, the minister said.

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