Reserve of pediatric companies, changing instructions from the health authorities … As of January 29, only 4% had received a first dose of vaccine. “We have to go much faster, much stronger,” recently hammels Olivier Véran.
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Can we still save the vaccination of 5-11 years in France? Six weeks after his official debut, on December 21, 2021, the young children’s immunization campaign seems deadlock. Often hesitant parents, doctors not always convinced, prudent health authorities and a government, until very recently, discreet on the subject, all in a context of mass contaminations in schools, which can pass vaccination for Obsolete, literally held the beginnings of the “pediatric vaccinal program”, according to official terminology.
The Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, seems to have measured the need to act. Thursday, February 3, he visited a children’s vaccination center in Saint-Nazaire (Loire-Atlantique). Two days ago, he animated a webinar for general practitioners and city pediatricians to try to restart the machine. “Individual profit is such in the children we have to go much faster, much stronger, much further”, he placked. But is not it already too late?
The numbers, it is true, sting his eyes. According to data from the Directorate General of Health (DGS), 241,000 children aged 5 to 11 had received a first dose of vaccine on January 29, or 4% of the age group. Among them, 93,000, less than 2%, had completed their two-dose scheme. By way of comparison, Spain displays, in the same age category, a rate of 54% first dose, Denmark, 47%, Italy, 32%, Germany and Belgium, of 18%, Austria, 12%. On the other side of the Atlantic, American experts despair and try to understand the reasons for their mediocre … 30%.
“We have done everything so that parents do not believe”
To explain the French delay, some evoke a late campaign, started a week after most of our neighbors. They add the Sacro-Holy Christmas holidays, which, last winter, had already disabled adult vaccination. A hole then quickly filled. But we barely to see in recent days the slightest sign of rebound. On the contrary, the last week of January, on the 56,000 pediatric injections carried out, only 24,000 were first doses.
Before attempting to find a cure, the experts try to make a diagnosis. Find the cause. As often, parents are the first sights. “Opinion surveys have shown that 40% were reluctant, the number rises to 60% among those who have a child in this category of age”, Advance Daniel Floret, Vice-President of the Technical Commission of Haute Vaccinations Health authority (HAS). He himself thoroughly tempered by recalling that the same surveys put forward a massive hesitation towards adult vaccination, largely dismantled in fact.
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