With 138 people vaccinated as of December 30, the vaccination campaign against Covid-19 in France has started more slowly than in neighboring countries, opening up a political debate.
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If the government was still criticized a few weeks ago for going too quickly in the implementation of vaccination in France, the speech has today exchange. In question, the slowness of the beginnings of the French vaccine campaign which began on December 28. For the first week, twenty-three accommodation establishments for dependent elderly people (Ehpad) are targeted, and 138 people were vaccinated on December 30, according to the Ministry of Health.
Germany, she , already had more than 78,000 people vaccinated on December 30, according to data from the Koch Institute, while vaccination began only a day earlier across the Rhine. For its part, the United Kingdom began on December 8 and more than 700,000 people have already been vaccinated. With the expected rebound of the epidemic and the appearance of a variant of SARS-CoV-2 suspected of being more contagious, the French strategy is today questioned by many scientists and doctors, worried that the vaccine does not not arrived on time.
Strategy assumed or default solution?
Aware of the criticisms leveled at it, the executive is staying the course of its strategy. Asked Tuesday evening on France 2, Olivier Véran assured that “this gap that we can record today in the start, it is assumed”. “What matters is that by the end of January we have caught up with the gap vis-à-vis everyone”, promises the Minister of Health.
For the chairman of the steering committee for the French vaccine strategy, Alain Fischer, this slowness “gives time to do things well in terms of safety, efficiency, organization and ethics with consent”. France is in fact the only country to obtain the consent of people during a pre-vaccination consultation with the attending or referring doctor of the nursing home. “If we go too fast, we risk increasing distrust and ultimately losing everything”, explains Jean-Daniel Lelièvre, head of the department of clinical immunology and infectious diseases at the Henri-Mondor hospital in Créteil. “At this point, we are not a fortnight, or even a month,” he proclaims.
In the event of an epidemic resumption, or an outbreak linked to the spread of the new variant, called “VOC-202012/01”, would it be possible to accelerate? Alain Fischer admits it: he is “not sure” that it is possible to go “really faster” than what is being done today. “We need an extremely complex logistical organization which requires distributing these vaccines in several places in France before fairly serving the 14,000 nursing homes in the territory”, underlined the “Mr. Vaccin” of the government on Europe 1.
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