Barely launched, already overbooked?
While the vaccination campaign for people over 75 years old started on Monday, and faced with the influx of candidates for the injection, the management of the schedule of appointments turns into a puzzle in many cities.
This Tuesday, the vaccination center of Clamart (Hauts-de-Seine) landed a sad record: “Two hundred appointments were canceled,” laments the mayor (Free!) Jean-Didier Berger.
In 24 hours, his city had used up all the vaccine stock.
And this is not the only one: the municipality of the 15th arrondissement of Paris is already preparing to postpone “about fifty appointments, for lack of sufficient doses”, warns the councilor (LR) Philippe Goujon.
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In Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine), the municipality is not to be outdone: “We are getting ready to postpone around 25 meetings while the schedule is also complete until March.
“A figure to be put into perspective, however, because people would have registered in several centers in the area to be sure to get an appointment.
"Angry" at the situation, the president of the Seine-Saint-Denis departmental council Philippe Troussel (PS) also pointed to "stocks managed in a dropper" despite the "craze" for the vaccine.
A just-in-time supply
So would there be a misfire in the ignition, or at least a communication problem between the municipalities and the health authorities as to the organization of appointment scheduling?
“The elected officials […] know in advance how many doses they can use this week […] The vast majority of them know this information and ensure that the number of vaccination slots corresponds to the number of doses”, s 'Olivier Véran is defended this Tuesday on France Inter.
Others, attacked the Minister of Health, "have opened up lots of niches, hoping that they would be given more doses".
"False", defend themselves several elected officials contacted by Le Parisien.
“The ARS pushes us to the wheel to make a maximum of appointments […] We open slots according to the number of doses it promises us, not that we have in stock.
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Faced with these repeated criticisms, Aurélien Rousseau, the director general of the Regional Health Agency (ARS) of Ile-de-France recognized a supply "just in time".
He puts it into perspective, however: out of 109 centers open in the region, 96 have "no appointments greater than the number of doses", five have "a small, quite manageable overrun" and eight have an "overbooking" that the ARS plans to "settle by sending people to other centers or postponing appointments by a few days."
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