French coronavirus vaccination strategy slows

PARIS (AP) – France’s cautious approach to launching a coronavirus vaccination program seems to have turned upside down, leaving only 500 people inoculated in the first week and rekindling anger over the government’s management of the pandemic.

Amid public outcry, the health minister promised on Monday to speed up the pace and made a belated public plea on behalf of the vaccine, saying it offers France and the world a “chance” to defeat a pandemic that has killed more than 1.8 million people. On Monday, President Emmanuel Macron held a special meeting with top government officials to address the vaccination strategy and other viral developments.

The slow launch of the vaccine by Pfizer and the German company BioNTech has been blamed on poor management, staff shortages during the holidays and a complex French consent policy designed to accommodate unusually widespread skepticism among the public. French.

Opposition doctors, mayors and politicians on Monday called for faster access to vaccines.

“It’s a state scandal,” said Jean Rottner, president of the Grand-Est region in eastern France, where infections are growing and some hospitals are in excess.

“Vaccination becomes more complicated than buying a car,” he told France-2 television.

In France, a country of 67 million people, only 516 people were vaccinated in the first six days, according to the French Ministry of Health. Health Minister Olivier Veran has promised that by the end of Monday, “a few thousand” people will be vaccinated, with the pace rising during the week – but that leaves France far behind its neighbors.

The total number of Germany in the first week exceeded 200,000, and that of Italy exceeded 100,000 – and even those countries are on fire because they are too slow to protect the public from a pandemic that killed more than 1.8 million people in worldwide.

The United States and China, meanwhile, have vaccinated millions. Britain became the first nation on Monday in the world to start giving people photos of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, so the UK now has two approved vaccines to use.

France began its vaccination campaign on December 27 in nursing homes because so many elderly people have died of the virus. But in the face of fears that people with cognitive impairments will be vaccinated against their will, the government has devised a time-consuming screening process before vaccines can be ordered and administered.

Macron’s government also wants it not to appear to be forcing vaccines on anyone.

Although France has lost more lives to the virus than most countries – more than 65,000 – polls suggest the French are unusually cautious about vaccines. They remember the drug scandals in France, worry about how quickly these new vaccines were developed and their long-term impact, and wonder about the profits they bring to the big pharmaceutical companies.

But many other French people are eager to get vaccinated and have been frustrated by the surprisingly slow launch.

“We are doing everything we can to motivate people to get vaccinated,” said Frederic Leyret, director of Saint Vincent’s Hospital in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, whose geriatric rehabilitation unit began vaccinations on Monday.

He lamented a mixed message from leading French officials, summing it up: “Go vaccinated, but we will go slowly, because it could be dangerous.”

Now that millions of people in several countries are injecting themselves, he said attitudes are beginning to change. The French government has adjusted its policies over the weekend to allow immediate vaccinations for health workers over the age of 50, along with nursing home residents. Vaccines will be gradually made available to others.

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