What if, to speed up the movement on the vaccination campaign, we simply bought more doses?
The solution, simple at first glance, comes up against multiple pitfalls.
Starting with the production capacity of laboratories capable of manufacturing them.
If France has "secured" the purchase, from five different laboratories, of 67.9 million doses by July 1, only the Pfizer / BioNTech duo is for the moment authorized to supply its products in European countries.
And for the pharmaceutical industry, it is difficult to increase the pace.
Its Belgian factory, which delivers 500,000 weekly doses to France, is running at full speed.
"Impossible to produce more as long as the new plant in Marburg, which we have just bought in Germany, is operational," explains Pfizer.
It is only from the month of March that we can climb to 750,000 doses per week for France.
By the end of the month, it will be 1.4 million doses that Pfizer will have delivered in France.
The laboratory must also comply with the contracts it has signed with the European Commission, the supply manager for each country of the Union.
16.4 million Pfizer doses are promised to France by July 1, but deliveries are made "over time and taking into account adjustments based on discussions with the European Commission and industry", is tempered at the Ministry of Health.
Doses from Spain and Switzerland
Salvation passes, in the short term, through the Moderna solution.
It is this Wednesday that the European Medicines Agency must add, except surprise, the vaccine of the American laboratory, designed on the same model as that of Pfizer / BioNTech: same dosage (two injections), same operation (that of the Messenger RNA, a molecule that instructs the body to make antibodies).
A healthy reinforcement since 500,000 doses per month from Spain and Switzerland are reserved for France from mid-January.
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For Professor Axel Kahn, former researcher and president of the National Cancer League, the arrival of this second vaccine against Covid-19, already authorized in the United States, is timely.
"The current doses of vaccines are insufficient compared to those we will need with the more contagious mutant versions of Covid-19 which are arriving," said the doctor.
With Moderna's contribution, we will have enough to protect the elderly and caregivers.
"And vaccinate a million French people from January, the goal set by the government, which has just decided to advance the vaccination of caregivers over 50 by one month.
Apart from those of Pfizer and Moderna, no other vaccine is expected in the coming weeks to further boost a vaccination campaign under fire from critics.
An extension of the recommended time between the two injections
One trick, however, could allow you to sting more without having to buy more doses.
This is the solution, consisting in extending the 21-day period recommended between the two injections, adopted by certain countries such as Denmark (six weeks instead of three) or England (twelve weeks!).
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"It is a possibility that we are looking at and that we do not forbid ourselves to implement," we confided to the Ministry of Health.
To seriously consider it, we will need to be sure that it is not medically contraindicated.
No question of taking the risk of not properly protecting the French.
This sleight of hand is widely criticized by many doctors.
"It's a heresy, judge Jean-Daniel Lelièvre, head of the infectious diseases department at Henri-Mondor hospital (Créteil).
We do not know at all what this gives, it risks altering the effectiveness of their vaccination campaign and especially giving bad ideas to others, in short, it is nonsense.
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Vaccine orders: what France has planned
By July 1, France has secured the purchase of 67.9 million doses from five different laboratories.
16.4 million from Pfizer / BionTech, 27.9 million from AstraZeneca, 6.9 million from Moderna, 8.3 million from Curevac and 8.4 million from Janssen, a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson, whose clinical trials are still in progress but which has submitted an evaluation file to the European health authorities.
If the goal of vaccinating 27 million French people before the summer, announced the day before the very first injection in France on Sunday, December 27, is confirmed to us this Tuesday by the Ministry of Health, it comes up against a start of a vaccination campaign under fire from critics for its slowness.
In a column published this Tuesday on our site, around thirty doctors including the infectious disease specialist Karine Lacombe and the collective Du Côté de la Science claim "access to generalized vaccination to all voluntary caregivers and to all people over 65 years, then quickly to the entire population. "They also ask" that new orders of available vaccines be made in a massive way, "whatever the cost" to use the words of the president and without waiting for hypothetical vaccines in development, which in the current state things, would be criminal. »Another demand,« that French and European factories can urgently benefit from Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna licensing, in order to rapidly produce the necessary doses and facilitate distribution logistics. "