INTERVIEW
Faced with criticism, the government promises to step up the pace of the coronavirus vaccination campaign. While the executive is singled out for the low number of vaccines administered, government spokesman Gabriel Attal announced in the Parisian Sunday an acceleration of the arrival of doses each week and a strengthening of the means to transfer them to nursing homes. Guest from Europe 1, Aurélien Rousseau, director of the Ile-de-France regional health agency, explains the organization of operations for the coming weeks.
The priority is to “prepare the deployment of vaccination in nursing homes”, and to go “to the people most at risk”, he assures us. “Our target is to vaccinate a million people by the end of January, especially in 8,000 nursing homes in the country, 700 in Île-de-France”. Thus, continues Aurélien Rousseau, “from this week, all nursing homes will have the date from which the vaccines will be delivered and will organize the vaccination”. “It is a logistically heavy operation, but prepared for several weeks,” he said again.
“Accelerate the vaccination of health professionals over 50”
“At the same time, we are going to speed up the vaccination of healthcare professionals over 50, which was initially planned in phase 2, and which we are going to launch this week”, indicates the director of the ARS of Île-de-France . “From Tuesday, in each department, there will be a vaccination center backed by a health establishment, which will accommodate health professionals, especially liberal, who want to be vaccinated.”
Then, in the subsequent phase, how will the vaccination of priority targets such as those administered locally be organized? “During the month of January, we will also open ambulatory vaccination centers”, answers Aurélien Rousseau. But, he specifies, it will nevertheless be necessary to deal with the constraint of keeping doses below a certain temperature. “We have enough to deploy these centers (…) but the available vaccine can be stored at -80 degrees and we have five days to administer it once thawed. We do not want to lose too many doses, so we will respect the priorities set “.
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