“No stress, no panic.
The Minister of Health Olivier Véran wanted to reassure the French while the influx of connections on Doctolib caused bugs on the site.
Appointments for an anti-Covid vaccine booster jumped in the wake of Olivier Véran's announcements on Thursday: more than 500,000 appointments recorded this Thursday.
Access to the platform was thus subject to a long waiting time.
"Many of you are trying to make an appointment," the Doctolib platform indicated at the beginning of the Thursday afternoon, mentioning more than 30 minutes of waiting before accessing vaccination slots.
It's been like this since this afternoon on doctolib for the 3rd dose of vaccine🙂 pic.twitter.com/NLZTJdrxNb
- fari 🍓 (@catanemone) November 25, 2021
The government announced on Thursday that it would deactivate health passes for adults who have not received their booster dose more than seven months after their last injection as of January 15.
Result: within 90 minutes of the announcement, some 350,000 appointments had already been made, said the platform.
And the general public had even anticipated the government measures, since 360,000 slots had been reserved Wednesday, a jump of 70% compared to the day before.
"Everyone can be vaccinated"
The Minister of Health, who preferred to see in this situation "an appetite of the French" for vaccination, wanted to be reassuring.
"If the site saturates, it will be restored in the next few minutes or hours, we have seen that every time there have been announcements like these", he relativized.
To receive the 3rd dose necessary to maintain the validity of the health pass, "you have two months, and during the two months which will arrive each one could have been vaccinated in due form", promised the minister.
Faced with this sudden increase in appointments, the government intends to "strengthen" the vaccination centers to meet the demands, and also "to rely heavily" on city medicine - as well as on pharmacists, nurses, midwives or other physiotherapists - to perform the injections, detailed Mr. Véran.
In addition, contrary to the situation which prevailed when the first doses arrived, a little less than a year ago, “we have in stock, as I speak to you, enough vaccines to vaccinate. everyone, ”he said.
