Four new non-serious cases of adverse events linked to the chikungunya vaccine have been reported in recent weeks, according to data published Friday by the drug agency, which recorded no new serious cases or deaths.
In total, as of June 5, "47 cases of adverse effects across the entire country, including 18 serious ones, have been reported and analyzed," said the French National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM), which is responsible, among other things, for vaccine monitoring.
The serious cases occurred in people with an average age of 74, and the vast majority in Réunion (77%).
And, since May 23, four new non-serious cases have been reported.
The main serious adverse effects reported a few days after vaccination suggest symptoms similar to those of a severe form of chikungunya virus infection, and the possibility of this type of effect was known with the Ixchiq vaccine, from the Valneva laboratory, the only one authorized to date.
Only one death appears very likely linked to the vaccine deployed in Réunion against chikungunya, the French drug agency announced in mid-May, specifying that a link had not ultimately been established at this stage with two other deaths deemed suspicious.
Faced with a major and widespread chikungunya epidemic in Réunion, the first in twenty years, a vaccination campaign was launched in early April in this overseas department. Now on the decline, the disease, transmitted from one human to another via the bite of an infected mosquito, has caused 23 deaths and affected approximately 200,000 people there, according to health authorities.
But the campaign was suspended at the end of April for those over 65 after reports of several serious side effects in elderly patients, including one death in an octogenarian who developed encephalitis.
Since then, vaccination has become almost non-existent in Reunion.
While the chikungunya epidemic is now on the decline in Réunion, another one started in early June in Mayotte, of uncertain scale.
A vaccination campaign with Ixchiq was therefore also decided in this archipelago, targeting 18-64 year olds with at least one comorbidity and taking into account the specific health conditions of Mahoran people, in particular the significant number of comorbidities at advanced stages.
But "we really have a very low number of doses administered" in Mayotte, indicated epidemiologist Hassani Youssouf, from the local unit of Public Health France, at the beginning of June, estimating that the vaccination rate peaked at around ten doses per week.
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