There are missing arms to vaccinate.
The number of volunteer doctors to administer the precious bulwark against the Covid-19, is below expectations.
Worse, they are less and less to report to participate in the vaccination campaign.
The number of pharmacies having declared having received orders from doctors on the portal of the Regional Health Agencies (ARS) fell below the 7,000 mark (against 11,200 the week of February 15, and nearly 7,500 last week).
A "consultation meeting" will be organized urgently this Tuesday afternoon at the Ministry of Health in order to study the possibility of bringing new forces into the system as quickly as possible.
Starting with pharmacists, who initially should not be contacted before mid-March.
It would also be a question of extending the prerogatives of nurses and midwives.
"We're going to need everyone"
“Vaccination by pharmacists, which would include prescription and injection, could be done in pharmacies, except for pregnant women, details a source close to the file, for the viral vector vaccines that are AstraZeneca and Jenssen.
Vaccination with messenger RNA vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna, would be done in vaccination centers.
Midwives could simultaneously vaccinate pregnant women with both technologies.
"If there are not enough doctors, it actually changes the game," says one in the entourage of Olivier Véran.
“We're going to need everyone.
"
It is all the more necessary to bring in new health professionals, as some of the volunteer doctors admit to encountering difficulties in filling their lists of ten priority patients.
VIDEO. Covid-19: vaccination in general practitioners, let's go!
Result: only 10% of the doses made available to them were injected last week.
The vaccines remain in stock in pharmacies or doctors.
The concern is that unlike pharmacies, the vast majority of GP surgeries are not equipped with regulatory equipment, namely an approved refrigerator, equipped with a continuous temperature control system, to receive medical equipment, a fortiori refrigerated vaccines (as recommended by AstraZeneca).
A problem that becomes even more difficult if the doses are stored longer than expected.
In this context, pharmacists will therefore be welcome.
AstraZeneca vaccine delivery delays
And since a problem never comes on its own, further delays are to be feared in the deliveries of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
According to the schedule established last week by the laboratory, 700,000 doses were to be available to the four recruited logisticians.
Except that the production would have known some difficulties, with a delay "of at least 24 hours on the planned program", according to one of the logisticians.
“This necessarily involves a whole series of other cascading delays in the logistics chain, deplores a source familiar with the matter.
The logisticians will receive the out of date products.
However, they need at least 24 additional hours to unpack the pallets from the 180 sites of the seven wholesale distributors.
They are then responsible for delivering directly to pharmacies.
"
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Result: these will not be supplied, at best, before March 11 or 12.
Even if, again according to these same logisticians, AstraZeneca could increase the pace again before the week in order to catch up, or even exceed the objectives to reach the million doses delivered.
Contacted, neither the AstraZeneca laboratory, nor the Directorate General of Health, responded to our requests.
