Jeremy Stubbs: "Europe should learn from Boris Johnson's vaccination strategy"

Jeremy Stubbs is Chairman of the British Conservative Party in Paris, Affiliate Professor at ESCE International Business School in Paris, and Deputy Editorial Director of Causeur.

FIGAROVOX.-The 15 million vaccine mark has been crossed in Great Britain.

Is it a revenge from Boris Johnson following the criticisms made about his crisis management and the Brexit affair?

Jeremy STUBBS.-

It's a victory for Boris Johnson, after criticism of his handling of the pandemic before and during the first lockdown.

The death rate in the UK is very high.

The British government has been accused of imposing containment too late, of formulating insufficiently clear rules, of unintentionally allowing the spread of the virus in the Ephads.

These initial failures were redeemed by the fact that the government achieved its goal of inoculating those most at risk, the nearly 15 million citizens over the age of 70, frontline medical teams, residents of nursing homes. care, before February 15.

In the current context, Brexit is much less important than managing the pandemic.

If the UK has been more effective than France and the EU, it is because it has shown anticipation, determination and pragmatism.

The British government has chosen to apply only one dose of the vaccine.

Can this policy be effective and can it enable Great Britain to emerge from the crisis more quickly than other countries, notably France?

Extending the time between the two doses of each vaccination is a very bold decision as this approach did not correspond to what was recommended by the laboratories that produce the vaccines.

It has since been approved by the WHO.

It has the advantage of giving a significant degree of protection more quickly to more people.

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Does this result reveal the slowness of the mechanisms of the European Union?

If the UK has been more effective than France and the EU, it is because it has shown anticipation, determination and pragmatism.

The vaccination operation was planned well in advance.

It was necessary to identify the vaccines that were most likely to be ready first and organize their authorization.

An example of this speed: the British government identified the Franco-Austrian vaccine, Valneva, and invested in its development, thus reserving the first deliveries of this product, to the nose and beard of the French state.

For vaccine deliveries, the government has not hesitated to call on the military and the private sector.

The roll-out of the vaccination program benefited both from the centralized planning of the UK NHS (the national health service) and its existing local networks of GPs across.

There are around 1,500 vaccination centers, including football stadiums, cathedrals, mosques and fire stations, the latter having become skilled vaccinators.

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For vaccine deliveries, the government has not hesitated to call on the army and the private sector, in particular for the operation of a very sophisticated logistics database.

What would be the solutions for France to improve its vaccination policy?

Instead of looking for pretexts to criticize Boris Johnson's government, the Van der Leyen - Merkel - Macron trio should congratulate him and take inspiration from him.