SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) – Samia Dridi, who was born, raised and works as a nurse in Saint-Denis, fears for her impoverished city, recalling how the coronavirus cut a particularly deadly path through various northern areas. Paris, a burial place for French kings buried in a majestic basilica.
Dridi and her sister accompanied their 92-year-old mother, who was born in Algeria, to a vaccination center for the first of two co-operative fires against COVID-19 days after it opened last week for people. over the age of 75.
While bureaucracy, consent requirements and supply problems have slowed France’s launch nationwide., the Seine-Saint-Denis region faces special challenges in preventing the virus and vaccinating people in turn.
It is the poorest region in mainland France and has had the highest increase in mortality in the country last spring, largely due to COVID-19. Up to 75 percent of the population is immigrant or has immigrant roots, and its inhabitants speak about 130 different languages. Health care is equal, with two to three times fewer hospital beds than other regions and a higher rate of chronic diseases. Many are key workers in supermarkets, public sanitation and healthcare.
Coronavirus was initially widely seen as the great equalizer, infecting the rich and poor. But studies have since shown that some people are more vulnerable than others, especially the elderly, those with other long-term illnesses and the poor, who often live on the fringes of mass society, such as non-French-speaking immigrants.
Dridi, 56, a nurse for more than three decades, is relieved that there is currently no “significant evolution” of the virus in her city. But don’t forget what happened when the pandemic first hit.
“We had whole families with COVID,” she said. Many have several generations living together in small apartments, which experts say is a common aggravating factor in the region.
Despite these bleak memories, local officials face particular challenges in finding out about vaccines in a population where many do not speak French, do not have access to regular medical care and, as in much of France, do not trust vaccine safety. .
Next month, a bus will travel through the region, especially visiting street markets, to provide information on vaccination. In addition, some 40 multilingual “vaccination ambassadors” will be trained to contact vaccinations and “false news” around them from March.
An example is Youssef Zaoui, 32, an Algerian living in Saint-Denis.
“I heard that vaccination is very dangerous, more so than the virus,” Zaoui said, sitting in the shadow of the basilica. His proof that he doesn’t have to worry about the virus: the butcher on the road and the man selling cigarettes nearby. They were there in early March “and I’m still here. … I’m still here, “he said.
Is there any chance that the vaccine will turn the inequality reflected in the death statistics in the region?
“Before the vaccine becomes a great equalizer, everyone needs to be vaccinated,” said Patrick Simon, who co-authored a study in June last year on the vulnerability of Seine-Saint-Denis minorities to COVID-19. He said, however, that the challenges for marginalized communities to access health care he continues, “so these inequalities will be reproduced for the vaccine as well.”
While the French health care system is meant to provide affordable medical treatment for all, bureaucratic demands and co-payments often frighten new immigrants or the very poor. Government health guidelines do not always reach those outside the system.
As a nurse at a municipal health center, Dridi sees poverty as a vulnerability to coronavirus.
“I get an injection, a blow, a bandage … and some people say, ‘I live in a car, I’m on the street,'” she said.
This misfortune was not evident at the vaccination center, where Dridi’s mother was shot – of the 17 opened in the entire region last week and where the luckiest Saint-Denis, who live in private homes, were seen in a recent visit. Some went to the center on sticks or held by one arm. A couple appeared on a scooter. Everyone was eager to be vaccinated.
They were among the lucky ones. Appointments were reduced after Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine dose allocations were reduced, as elsewhere in France and Europe.
“I’m lucky to be vaccinated today,” said one woman, who burst into tears. She became infected with COVID-19 during treatment at a private clinic in April and lost her mother in October to the virus after contracting it in a hospital where she was treated after a fall.
The woman, who refused to give her name, told Dridi and her sister to take care of their mother because “she is your treasure.”
For Dridi, seeing people die because of COVID-19 can be a game changer.
“Some people say not (get vaccinated) because they have no contact with death,” Dridi said. But death, “that makes you react.”