RIBECOURT-LA-TOUR, France (Reuters) – Days after receiving his first coronavirus vaccine shot, Renaud Georges was given an injection he hoped could embrace his grandchildren for the first time in months. Then he received a text message informing him that the appointment had been canceled.
“It’s a big disappointment,” he said. “For us, the vaccine is the only way out of this miserable crisis.”
The retired school teacher said that due to the lack of doses the vaccine, the next available lock was on March 10th. His wife Annie, who has been shy for two months for her 75th birthday and with good health does not become a priority, does not know when she does not want to be vaccinated.
‘We miss not being able to hug our children or hold them in our arms. That’s all for us, ”said Georges.
Europe has a shortage of vaccines because Pfizer and Moderna have temporarily delayed supplies, while AstraZeneca said it would reduce production problems in the first quarter to the European Union.
The shortages led to the northern Hauts-de-France region where the Georges live, the greater Paris area and at least one other region, which together make up a third of the French population, postponed the first doses.
General practitioner Anthony Haro said he was forced to temporarily close the vaccination center in nearby Saint-Amand-les-Eaux, which had been running for nine days, after the local hospital that provided the vaccine said the supply exhausted.
“We have made promises to our patients, and these promises have brought comfort,” he said. “We currently have a lot of fragile patients, like those who have chemotherapy, who we can’t vaccinate because doses are reserved for vaccinations in the second round.”
“NO REPENTANCE”
France has no regrets about Europe’s process of obtaining vaccines, European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune said.
“The idea that France or Germany could get the vaccine but not its neighbor makes no sense,” the minister said.
Local officials blame the government for a chaotic deployment of vaccine. They say it panicked after the campaign started slowly and made the vaccine available to too many too quickly.
Health Minister Olivier Veran said no cancellations had been made but only that the appointments had been postponed and that the stocks of pharmaceutical companies were being given the lower than expected stocks. He also said that the increasing number of vaccination centers had led to more appointments than doses in some places.
In mid-January, the mayor of Paris’ 17th arrondissement, Geoffroy Boulard, scrambled to find doctors, nurses and administrative staff to run a third vaccination center in his district that could deliver at least 1,200 COVID shots a day.
Three days before the opening of the center, city officials told Boulard that there were not enough doses of Pfizer vaccine. “It feels like we’re being taken for idiots,” he said.
The acquisition of vaccines was too opaque and the consequences were across France. President Emmanuel Macron’s government has not heeded previous lessons, he said.
“Planning ahead is not a French feature. “We saw it with masks, test kits and we see it again with vaccination of doses,” he complained. “What was Plan B?”
Reporting by Pascal Rossignol in Ribecourt-la-Tour and Caroline Pailliez in Paris; Additional reporting by Elizabeth Pineau; Written by Richard Lough; Edited by Janet Lawrence