Every day, France seems to put a little more its European donkey cap on vaccination.
The campaign, which has just started in France, is under fire from critics.
And for good reason, only "several thousand people" have received injections from Pfizer, the only one approved in France to date, according to Olivier Véran against 250,000 in Germany or nearly a million in Great Britain.
Even if the Minister of Health promises a "rise in power" in the coming days and while the vaccination campaign in nursing homes has been extended to caregivers over 50 years old, this slowness raises questions.
Logistics failures, singled out
Having vaccines is good, being able to distribute them is better, some elected officials and doctors in the field say today.
If the stocks arrive as planned, "we do not have the organization to target the population at the start", according to Eric Billy, researcher and member of the collective "On the side of science".
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Consent, logistics, doses… Six questions on the slowness of vaccination in France
“Given the social and economic conditions imposed on us by this crisis, having more than 500,000 doses blocked in the fridge because of an organizational funnel is unacceptable,” he said.
What if the solution to speed up the pace was on the side of local elected officials?
In Raincy (Seine-Saint-Denis), the mayor (SE) Jean-Michel Genestier intends to fill “this gaping hole in terms of logistics”.
The sine qua non: obtain the vaccines and the green light from the State upstream.
"If we have that, we can be operational in 72 hours," he says.
Apart from the researchers who invent the remedies, the caregivers who then inject the doses, anti-covid vaccination also shines the spotlight on a lesser-known link in the chain: logistics, which is particularly complex in the case of new serums.
Pfizer vaccines, the first on the market, must in fact be delivered at -70 ° C in containers filled with carbon dioxide, a real technical challenge.
However, the refrigerated packaging of the French SME Sofrigam has only just been qualified this Monday morning.
It was time to argue the most impatient who are worried about seeing the vaccination skate in France.
For the pros, on the contrary, the procedure was particularly fast and efficient.
“We work in a very specific sector.
It's not like food, all the stages must be qualified and validated ”emphasizes Gilles Labranque, the CEO of this group.
The delicate collection of consent
While nursing home residents have priority to be immunized, a pre-vaccination consultation has been set up to obtain their informed consent.
"It is a pledge of confidence for our fellow citizens", once again justified the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, on December 31.
An excessive precaution according to doctors, joined by the Academy of medicine which calls for "to simplify and shorten as much as possible the vaccination procedures in nursing homes".
However, many have cognitive problems.
In this case, we must then turn to their legal advisers "except that between Christmas and the New Year, many were on leave", loose Jean-Paul Hamon, honorary president of the federation of doctors of France.
In Israel, where a third of those over 60 have already been vaccinated, the government has chosen to address seniors more directly and reach a wider audience: thus all patients over 60, or considered to be risk, have received an SMS from their Social Security fund so that they can make a first appointment to get vaccinated.
Too few caregivers authorized to vaccinate
Today, doctors and nurses, only in the presence of the former, can inject the doses.
“Why make the vaccine strategy weigh on such a small number of actors?
“Asks Lionel Barrand, president of the national union of young medical biologists.
Now that labs are less overwhelmed by PCR testing, they can lend a hand.
"We are available, we have the doctors, nurses, secure premises to vaccinate, fridges to store the doses, let's go and quickly.
"
"There are also pharmacists, firefighters perhaps who can help, we focused on general practitioners by establishing a prior consultation or we do not have the strength", abounds Frédéric Valletoux, president of the Hospital Federation of France.
As for Jérôme Goeminne who heads in the East one of the 135 regional hospital groups (GHT) which coordinate the offer of care in France, he is still waiting for the vaccines, promised Wednesday.
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In the meantime, “the super-fridges that equip our hospitals are empty.
It's slow, too slow, from the start, we should have relied on the existing hospitals and 135 GHTs.
If GPs are overwhelmed, we can replace them.
We missed the boat: we could have gone ten times faster, starting from the field, taking into account local realities: a simple email to the 135 GHT and presto, let's go!
".
The Sanofi vaccine, a delay not necessarily anticipated
The government assures it, there is no delay in the delivery of Pfizer doses.
What the industrialist confirms: “Since December 26, the date of our first shipments to France, we have not experienced any incident, whether on quantities, or respect for the cold chain, adds his door. -speaking and all deliveries have arrived safely.
"
But one thing was not anticipated: the delay in marketing Sanofi's vaccine.
"The European Union had ordered 400 million doses from Sanofi and France had taken 90 million", explains Eric Billy.
So if the use of other laboratories has made it possible to avoid running out of fuel, the news of this delay has all the same undermined a large part of the French plan.
Sanofi represented 40% of the European order, and even more for France.
According to some, the slowness of the vaccination campaign in France is due in part to the wait for the "French" vaccine from Sanofi ... but this hypothesis has been described as "big nonsense" by Olivier Véran.