What if, after the oldest and most fragile, we passed on ... the youngest?
"Of course we want to get vaccinated quickly," says Mélanie Luce, president of the Union of Students of France (Unef).
This week, the president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, Renaud Muselier, and the president of the Republican group in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau, proposed that young people could be vaccinated against Covid-19 as soon as possible, for example from the month of April.
The first wants to "target" the "18-24 years" with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, he said on RMC and BFMTV.
The first 2.7 million doses of this vaccine are expected in April, ie ... the same number as that of those enrolled in higher education.
For the moment, priority has therefore been given to nursing home residents, caregivers, people over the age of 75, those suffering from a very serious illness and those over 50 with comorbidities.
What makes the world (just six million over 75 years)!
6.2% of the adult population received at least one dose of the vaccine as of March 3, and nearly 30% of those 80 and over.
In mid-April, all 50-74 year olds - this time, without comorbidities - will in turn be able to be bitten, as Jean Castex indicated during his press conference on Thursday evening.
And inevitably, the 18-24 are at the bottom of the ranking, with 0.5% of vaccinated for the moment.
"Our youth is going through a real tragedy"
The president of the UDI, Jean-Christophe Lagarde, has also been concerned about the health of students for several weeks.
“Our youth are living a real tragedy with the crisis.
The number of those with depression has doubled and vaccinating them would allow them to finish their studies more correctly, to return to university as quickly as possible and to feel better, ”defends the deputy for Seine-Saint-Denis.
Some face-to-face courses resumed in February, but with very strict gauges and health rules.
The elected representative thinks that it would be possible to start vaccinating young people without waiting for the month of April.
“We have AstraZeneca doses in the fridges, let's use them!
He exclaims, referring to the 400,000 doses stored in hospitals.
This Friday, the Minister of Health also asked to redistribute them to vaccination centers.
Other countries have already opted for such a strategy.
Israel, the world leader in vaccination, integrated 16-39 year olds into the circuit at the end of January.
Within two weeks, 40% of them had received a first dose, reports The Times of Israel.
The Canadian province of New Brunswick has just decided that 16-24 year olds will come before 50-69 year olds.
"It is not really that we are opposed to young people being vaccinated, it is that we would like our elders to be vaccinated as a priority," lamented to Radio Canada Marcel Larocque, president of the Francophone Association of Seniors of New Brunswick.
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Food distribution
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The crisis has doubled the number of beneficiaries
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Vaccinate young people as a priority?
The idea makes sense in the eyes of epidemiologist Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute for Global Health in Geneva.
“I am very in favor of vaccinating 18-25 year olds as a priority after having vaccinated the elderly and vulnerable, caregivers and 50-75 year olds with co-morbidities.
They have paid a heavy social, educational and economic price for the crisis and society owes them a debt which justifies this priority, ”he said.
“It's very hard to assess who suffers the most, and the impact on the elderly should not be minimized.
They too would like to return to the tarot club when they are vaccinated ”, qualifies the young general practitioner Michaël Rochoy, 34 years old.
The government defends its strategy
On the side of the Ministry of Health, we are unsurprisingly defending the choice of having vaccinated as a priority the elderly and frail, and to follow up with those suffering from comorbidities.
“When we based our strategy on the recommendations of the High Authority for Health, we took into consideration that vaccines offered protection against serious forms.
So the priority goes to those who have the risk of presenting it ”, justifies one in the entourage of Olivier Véran.
Same response from Alain Fischer, chairman of the Vaccine Strategy Orientation Council.
“Opening up to other audiences will be gradual, but our goal is to rapidly vaccinate vulnerable people,” his team tells us.
A temporal vagueness that does not satisfy Mélanie Luce, the president of UNEF.
"Once we have vaccinated the elderly and health workers, students must be next on the list," she says.
Deprived of evenings and outings for a good part of the year, all the young people have lived an extremely difficult year.
So, all eyes are already on the start of the school year in September or October.
“If the vaccination begins in April or May, we can hope to have a majority of vaccinated for the start of the school year.
Not if we start in August ”, exhorts Mélanie Luce.
Admittedly, the number of doses is still very limited.
But France must - at this stage - receive 20 million in March and April combined, three times more than in January and February combined, and more than 20 million additional in May alone.
A vaccine that limits infections?
Could the salvation of the youth come from new scientific data?
Gradually, scientific work agreed that the vaccine would be effective not only against severe or symptomatic forms, but also against simple transmission.
"Very interesting studies tending to show that vaccination would protect against contagiousness," said Olivier Véran Thursday evening.
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It could turn a lot of things upside down.
Vaccinating young people could thus make it possible to limit the risk of them infecting their elders.
Last summer, indicators had shown that the incidence had risen first among those under 30, who have more social contact and have taken more advantage of this period of deconfinement to party and decompress.
“If I am vaccinated, I will be able to visit my parents but also all my friends and all my family without fear of transmitting the virus to them.
I dream of it, ”says Marie, 23, who no longer counts the hours of curfew to languish in her Parisian studio.
"If tomorrow we had elements making it possible to definitively establish the effectiveness of vaccines on contagiousness, obviously that would have an interest and could change certain things", we slip in the entourage of Olivier Véran.
The Haute Autorité de santé would then be called upon to issue a new opinion.
"If exposure becomes an important criterion, young people must very clearly be a priority," approves Michaël Rochoy.
Last aspect: 20-29 year olds have been twice less contaminated than those over 50 for a year, according to the Institut Pasteur.
However, people who are already infected only need one dose of the vaccine.
Thus, with the same stock, it would be possible to vaccinate more young people than older people.