Covid France: Alert as people relax guard and catch Covid after jab

French doctors are reporting a new ‘syndrome’ associated with Covid-19 vaccination where people - often patients aged 60 and over - catch the virus in the days following a first injection because they believe they have immediate immunity.

Health professionals have spoken of multiple cases of patients being rushed to hospital with severe Covid-19 not long after their first vaccination injection, in what is being dubbed ‘vaccinated syndrome’.

It appears that these patients stop measures such as physical distancing and are then being infected with Covid-19 before their vaccination has had a chance to take effect.

It takes around two weeks for protection against the virus to develop after the vaccination and the vaccines do not offer their full protection until the second dose has been given.

Doctors have reported increased numbers of patients who appear to have ‘forgotten’ this fact.

Professor Alain Fischer, president of the government’s vaccination strategy, said it was important to talk about this vaccine syndrome.

“The vaccination is a process that leads to protection, but not in one day,” he told French news channel LCI.

He said that people should not consider themselves protected against Covid-19 after just one dose of a vaccination.

“You need to maintain the same strict measures during this process. The protection increases progressively starting two weeks after the first dose but is optimal two weeks after the second dose.

“We need to remind people of this”.

Dr Benjamin Davido, from the Garches hospital in Hauts-de-Seine, wrote in Le Parisien: “People see their first dose as a high point, but the first antibodies only appear after two weeks, and then rise.”

A SAMU doctor told La Dépêche that the profile of such patients tends to be people aged 60 to 75.

He said: “They tell me, ‘No, it’s not possible [that it’s Covid], I have been vaccinated’, but when we ask when, they say they only had their first injection 10 days ago.”

Professor Jean-Michel Constantin, head of intensive care at the Pitié Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, told Europe 1: “As soon as they’re vaccinated, people meet family and friends, get closer, start shaking hands and doing ‘la bise’. But we need to remember that the virus is still around.”

Although the phenomenon has not yet led to a big wave of new cases, it is a cause for concern for health authorities, who are calling for people to remain vigilant.

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