Olivier Véran’s announcements quickly produced their effect. Unsurprisingly, since the Minister of Health spoke, the inhabitants of the Montluçonnais basin have flocked to Doctolib to stall their third dose. Some had even anticipated by logging on to the site to make an appointment the day before …
Covid-19: 3rd dose for all, reduced validity of PCR tests, new protocol at school … Measures to “avoid submersion”
2,300 appointments made since Wednesday
“Between Thursday evening and Friday morning, we recorded 1,300 new meetings. The day before, we had already had a thousand, whereas in October and early November, we were on an average of a hundred per day… ”, indicates Dr Serge Gallet, one of the managers of the Montluçon vaccination center. .
Faced with this predictable increase in demand given the new eligibility criteria for this vaccine booster, healthcare professionals are adapting. And the vaccination center located in the former premises of S2MI, avenue du Président-Auriol, is no exception to the rule.
New niches open
Its officials have made the decision to open additional slots as early as next week. “Until mid-December, we planned to open Mondays and Wednesdays and we will also open Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturday mornings until December 18,” explains Dr. Gallet. In December, we may have to open an extra day, but we wait and see. We will adapt. “
From Monday, November 29, the vaccination center will operate Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
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For the time being, it is still planned that the center will take a break during the Christmas holidays and resume its activity on January 3. “There too, we will adapt but we think it is possible knowing that we do not have the same time constraints to respect as what we experienced with the first and second doses. We always have people who come for a first injection, but it is marginal, explains the practitioner. On the other hand, it is likely that we will have to increase the number of slots in January. In any event, we are committed to ensuring that there are free slots. “
9,600 meetings open for the month of December
With these new adjustments, the center will revert to some 750 injections per day.
We will offer 9,600 meetings in all in December. By way of comparison, between early October and Wednesday, 7,500 recalls were made. And if necessary, we will do more. In Athanor, we were able to increase to 1,300 doses per day last summer
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The difference now is that doctors, nurses and pharmacists also vaccinate a lot (read elsewhere). They now carry out nearly 37% of vaccinations against Covid-19 in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, according to figures from the ARS.
“Taking into account what we have been able to do on the primary vaccinations, we have assessed the need for the district at nearly 50,000 injections,” indicates Dr. Gallet. Between the 7,500 that we have already made, the 9,600 reminders that we will do by the end of the year and these 37% of health professionals, we should have between 15 and 20,000 reminders to do from January, then in February and March. “
Liberal health professionals are facing the same increase in appointment requests as confirmed by Montluçonnaise Bénédicte Bidet, representative of pharmacists within the Regional Union of Health Professionals (URPS). “Ten out of twelve phone calls concern vaccination. People have a lot of questions and a lot of misunderstanding. Until now, I was doing three sessions a week and there, I will go to the vaccination every day. I am full until December 14 and will have 35 injections days. We really do to the maximum of what we can given our other activities because there are always tests, prescriptions, etc. “
Like her, “almost all pharmacies in the basin vaccinate. And the three, four who don’t, it’s for reasons beyond their control. Everyone has increased their dates. I have the example of a colleague who is alone in her dispensary and who will open at 7:30 am tomorrow morning to vaccinate 14 people. Frankly, everyone is mobilized, everyone is playing the game ”.
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Michael Nicolas
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