A caregiver takes care of patients with chikungunya at the Western Hospital Center Réunion (Chor) in Saint Paul, on Reunion Island, April 10, 2025 (AFP / Richard Bouhet)
A deadly epidemic and a vaccine that arouses fears: Reunion, hard hit by chikungunya, continues to face a complex situation, while a second death potentially linked to the vaccine has just been reported.
“How was the dangerousness of the vaccine not better evaluated?”, Wednesday rebelled the senator from La Réunion, Evelyne Corbière Naminzo (Communist Republican Citizen and Ecologist-Kanaky), during questions to the government.
“All security studies have been done. I cannot let you say that we use the people of Reunion as a guinea pig,” said Yannick Neuder, Minister responsible for Health.
This lively exchange testifies to the doubts around the IXCHIQ vaccine, developed by the Franco-Austrichian Laboratory Valneva and which was suspended among those over 65 after the death at the end of April of an octogenarian.
However, still on Wednesday, a second death was mentioned by Valneva and the European Medicines Agency (EMA), among the elderly having presented adverse effects after receiving this vaccine.
The first case concerned an 84 -year -old man who developed encephalitis. The second concerned a 77 -year -old man reached by Parkinson’s disease whose swallowing difficulties have worsened and may have caused aspiration pneumonia.
– “In -depth evaluation” –
“The accountability of the first death reported in connection with IXCHIQ vaccination for an 84 -year -old person was assessed as very likely,” the Ministry of Health Center told AFP on Friday.
An IXCHIQ vaccine box against chikungunya in a pharmacy at the start of the vaccination campaign at the Sale pond, April 7, 2025 on Reunion Island (AFP / Richard Bouhet)
On the other hand, the relationship between the vaccine and the second death mentioned by the EMA is considered to be “doubtful” by the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines (ANSM) and the Regional Pharmacovigilance Center, on a scale of imputability comprising five levels (very likely – likely – plausible – doubtful – incompatible), according to this source.
This death “is therefore not counted” in the current public health report France (SPF), which reports twelve dead “linked to chikungunya” since the beginning of 2025 on this island of the Indian Ocean, where it observes a slight decrease in the epidemic.
Investigations in these cases and other pharmacovigilance reports are continuing, according to the health crisis center.
Time to carry out “an in-depth assessment” of the benefit/risk balance, the EMA has decided to contraindicate the use of the vaccine for those over 65.
This restriction of use was already in force since April 26 in France, after three serious adverse events in people over 80 years old presenting comorbidities, including the first death in Reunion.
– 40,000 doses around the world –
The authorities initially given priority to the vaccination of adults aged 65 and over, in particular those with comorbidities.
Is the vaccine really in question? The EMA stresses that the reason for the 17 cases of serious adverse effects reported so far in people aged 62 to 89 having received the vaccine, and their link with the latter “have not yet been determined”.
Chikungunya screening tests carried out in the laboratory of the Saint-Denis University Hospital Center, on Reunion Island, April 10, 2025 (AFP / Richard Bouhet)
For its part, Valneva continues to estimate that the benefit/risk ratio of its vaccine is “positive for the vast majority of people potentially exposed to the disease”. “The company will continue to monitor all the serious side effects reported,” she says.
The IXCHIQ serum is an attenuated living vaccine (it uses a weakened version of the virus) against chikungunya, an infectious disease due to a virus transmitted by the tiger mosquito which causes high fever and joint pain.
Mainly intended for people living or traveling in risk areas, it has been approved in the United States since 2023 and in the European Union since 2024. This year, it has obtained a marketing authorization in Brazil and the United Kingdom.
To date, more than 40,000 doses of the vaccine have been used worldwide, underlines Valneva.
