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France is reviewing its Covid-19 immunization campaign after a cautious, tiered strategy aimed at placating the world’s most vaccine-skeptical population failed in its first week.
The country has only vaccinated about 350 people against Covid-19 to date, compared to 1 million in the UK and 238,000 in Germany, although the government has received 500,000 doses of the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine and will receive a similar amount each. week in January.
The situation is mounting pressure on President Emmanuel Macron and risks triggering another political fight over how the government has handled the Covid-19 pandemic. Opposition politicians have already criticized the government for how it failed to supply masks and struggled to implement massive tests last year.
Axel Kahn, a prominent French geneticist, called the slow start to the vaccination campaign “a disaster” over the weekend and blamed excessive government bureaucracy, while the National Academy of Medicine, an organization of doctors, said that ” there was no more time to lose ”As about 300 people die from the virus in France every day.
The death toll from Covid-19 in the country is almost 65,000 people so far. Despite two national closures and ongoing restrictions, it has the highest case count in Western Europe, according to data from Johns Hopkins.
Macron, seemingly angry, has reportedly told his government that “things must change quickly and strongly and they will,” according to a report in the Journal du Dimanche on Sunday.
Strategy changes
The government announced changes to its vaccine implementation strategy late last week, advancing the schedule for administering doses to healthcare workers 50 and older from late February until now. It also reversed an earlier decision to rely heavily on family doctors to run the program, and Health Minister Olivier Véran promised to open mass vaccination centers “before February.”
France had initially planned to focus first on vaccinating older people in nursing homes, who face the highest risk of death from coronavirus. But that posed logistical challenges, as nursing homes lacked the facilities to keep the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine at the required ultra-low temperatures. Older people also had to have a consultation with a doctor and a waiting period of at least five days before being vaccinated.
France had set a goal of vaccinating 1 million people by the end of February and up to 20 million in the first half of the year. The government and outside advisers advocated a phased approach so regulators have time to review additional vaccines and build public trust.
Academic studies and surveys have shown that the French are the most cautious about vaccines of any country in the world, and especially concerned about side effects. A 2018 Gallup-Wellcome Trust study showed that one in three in France disagreed that vaccines were safe, the highest percentage in the 140 countries surveyed.
Philippe Juvin, who heads the emergency department at the Georges Pompidou hospital in Paris and is also mayor of a Paris suburb, criticized the government’s strategy. “The announced changes are still very insufficient: we need to open vaccination to a wider population now,” he told the Financial Times over the weekend.
“Going slowly does not build confidence; rather, it supports the idea that there is something to worry about. All these excuses hide fundamental problems of preparation ”.
Mr Juvin pointed to Germany, where some 400 vaccination centers were planned, and said that France needed similar facilities as soon as possible. “Germany ordered specialized freezers in November and secured additional doses outside of the EU joint purchase agreement. Where are ours?
Government defense
Government spokesman Gabriel Attal said Sunday that it was unfair to judge the vaccine campaign after just one week and that the government defended the decision to start with the elderly in nursing homes.
The cautious approach appears to be failing. Only 40 percent of French people surveyed by Ipsos last week said they planned to get vaccinated, up from 54 percent in October and 59 percent in August.
Mistrust of vaccines took root in France around 2009 after the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic was seen to have been mishandled, said Jocelyn Raude, a sociologist at EHESP, the French school of public health.
“The government is terrified by the anti-vaccine movement and has been scarred by the memory of the H1N1 failure,” he said. As a result, public messages to date about the Covid-19 vaccine have focused too much on the potential risks and unknowns and not enough on the benefits of the vaccine.
“There is a desire to be transparent and reassuring, but they have gone too far with precautions,” added Mr. Raude.
Heidi Larson, director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said she was “somewhat understanding” of France’s approach given the “hypercritical” environment there.
“We must remember that the public will remember how this is handled for better or for worse. That should not be taken lightly in an effort to go as quickly as possible. “- Copyright by The Financial Times Limited 2021
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