The countdown begins.
Three Covid-19 vaccine trials should start in France from mid-December on 2,200 volunteers recruited through a platform specially set up this fall, Inserm (National Institute of health and medical research).
"We are ready, we are waiting to have the authorizations", declared during an online press conference Odile Launay, infectious disease specialist at the Cochin hospital (AP-HP) in Paris and coordinator of this platform, Covireivac.
Two of these trials will be phase 3 trials, that is to say the most advanced phase: they concern the vaccine from the Janssen laboratory (a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson) and that developed by the firm AstraZeneca and the University of 'Oxford.
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These two trials will involve 1,000 volunteers each from mid-December, subject to the necessary authorizations (from the ANSM drug agency and a Personal Protection Committee).
These two vaccines are already in phase 3 trials on tens of thousands of volunteers in other countries.
Elderly patients
The third trial concerns one of the most advanced vaccines in its development, that of the American laboratory Moderna.
It is evaluated in phase 3 on 30,000 people in the United States, but the French trial will be on a smaller scale, in phase 2 and on 180 volunteers, from the end of December or the beginning of January.
The goal is not to assess its effectiveness on a large scale, but to examine "in a much more detailed way", on targeted criteria, the immune response caused by this vaccine, explained Professor Launay.
Thus, among the 180 volunteers, 120 will be aged 70 and over.
It is important to assess the action of vaccines against Covid in the elderly because they are among those at risk.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) must decide no later than January 12 for a possible authorization of Moderna's vaccine.
For the moment, there is only one phase 1 trial (first administration on a limited number of healthy individuals, from 10 to 100) in progress in France, that of the Institut Pasteur.
In total, more than 41,000 volunteers have registered on the Covireivac platform.