France’s slow vaccination strategy for coronavirus strikes back

PARIS (AP) – France’s cautious approach to launching a coronavirus vaccination program appears to have backfired, vaccinating barely 500 people in the first week and rekindling anger over the government’s handling of the pandemic .

Amid public outcry on Monday, the health minister promised on Monday to increase the pace and made a late public plea on behalf of the vaccine, saying it offers a ‘chance’ for France and the world to overcome a pandemic that is more than 1.8 million killed. people. President Emmanuel Macron held a special meeting with top government officials on Monday to address the vaccine strategy and other virus developments.

The slow explosion of the vaccine made by Pfizer and the German firm BioNTech has been blamed for mismanagement, staff shortages during holidays and a complicated French consent policy designed to accommodate extraordinarily broad skepticism against the French public.

Doctors, mayors and opposition politicians called for faster access to vaccines on Monday.

“This is a state scandal,” said Jean Rottner, president of the Grand-Est region in eastern France, where infections are on the rise and some hospitals are overcrowded.

“Getting vaccinated is getting more complicated than buying a car,” he said on France 2 television.

In the French country, a country of 67 million people, only 516 people were vaccinated in the first six days. Health Minister Olivier Veran has promised that by the end of Monday, a “thousand” people will be vaccinated, at a rate that will increase through the week – but that still leaves France well behind its neighbors.

Germany’s total of the first week exceeded 200,000 and Italy was over 100,000 – and even the countries are under fire because they were too slow to protect the public from a pandemic that killed more than 1.8 million people worldwide.

Meanwhile, the US and China have vaccinated millions. Britain became the first nation on Monday in the world to start taking people from the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, so the UK now has two approved vaccines to use.

France launched its vaccination campaign on December 27 in nursing homes because so many elderly people died with the virus. But because they fear that people with cognitive problems will be vaccinated against their will, the government has estimated a time-consuming screening process before the vaccines can be ordered and administered.

Macron’s government also does not want to appear to be forcing anyone to get vaccinated.

Although France has lost more lives to the virus than most countries – more than 65,000 – polls show that the French are extremely wary of vaccines. They remember past French drug scandals, are concerned about how quickly these new vaccines have been developed and their long-term impact, and wonder about the profits it brings to major pharmaceutical companies.

But many other French are eager to be vaccinated and are frustrated by the surprisingly slow implementation.

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

He lamented a mixed message from leading French officials, which he summed up: “Go get vaccinated, but we will go slow because it can be dangerous.”

Now that millions of people are being injected into various countries, he said the attitude is starting to shift. The French government last weekend adjusted its policy to allow immediate vaccinations for medical workers over the age of 50, along with residents of the nursing home. Vaccines will gradually be made available to others.

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