The low number of people vaccinated against COVID-19 in France since the launch of the vaccination campaign on Sunday is increasingly criticized, even if the government says it is taking on this slower start than in neighboring countries.
“Germany has already more than 42,000 vaccinated, the United Kingdom has 900,000 and France less than 200!”, exclaimed on Twitter Bruno Retailleau, president of the Les Républicains (LR) party in the Senate.
“After the masks, the tests and the isolation, another failure would be terrible”, he adds, asking the government to unveil the vaccination schedule for accommodation establishments for dependent elderly people (Ehpad) by department.
#vaccination Germany has already more than 42,000 vaccinated, the UK has 900,000 and France less than 200! After the masks, the tests and the isolation, another failure would be terrible. I ask @gouvernementFR to make public the vaccination schedule for nursing homes by department
– Bruno Retailleau (@BrunoRetailleau) December 30, 2020
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France began vaccinations against COVID-19 on Sunday after the green light from the European Medicines Authority (EMA) for the use of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.
The government plans to vaccinate around one million very old people in a first phase. Next come people over 65 and members of the health workforce, with the most vulnerable first, followed by the rest of the population.
“This strategy has a consequence, it forces you to go more slowly, because you should know that there are around 14,000 establishments of this type (nursing homes, editor’s note) in France and that the vaccine is difficult to transport, difficult to keep”, pleaded Wednesday Professor Alain Fischer, coordinator of the vaccine strategy against Covid-19 in France, on France Info.
“Communication error”
For Philippe Juvin, head of emergencies at the Georges Pompidou hospital in Paris and LR mayor of La Garenne-Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine), these logistical questions hide the fact that the government “does not have a vaccine strategy”.
“It is a strategy of slowness suffered because we are not ready”, he lamented Wednesday on CNews.
For his part, the geneticist Axel Kahn criticized on Europe 1 the advance to “very small step” vaccination likely to fuel the mistrust of the French towards vaccines.
“It is not by taking very small steps that we will be able to convince them, on the contrary. We will convince them that indeed, if we are going so slowly, it is because we are not sure of oneself and that there is a danger “, he said, regretting a “very important strategic communication error”.
Speaking Tuesday evening on France 2, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran said he claimed government caution and the delay taken by France compared to other countries.
“I do not confuse speed and haste, this gap that we can record today – the start I am sometimes told it goes a little slowly in France – it is assumed”, he said.
“What matters is that, by the end of January, we will have caught up with the gap vis-à-vis everyone and that the objective is the same: we will protect the all vulnerable audiences “.
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