After being strongly criticized for a sluggish start to the vaccination campaign, the French government has turned the turbo.
Since January 18, people over 75 and those with pathologies likely to lead to severe forms of Covid-19 have been able to receive a first dose of vaccine.
However, they will not all be vaccinated as quickly as they want.
Despite the speed of deployment of the vaccination centers - more than 800 - the campaign is hampered by the limited number of vaccine doses available.
“
With the acceleration of the vaccination campaign in nursing homes.
We will have largely reached one million French people vaccinated by the end of the month,
”Health Minister Olivier Véran told reporters.
"
Not everyone can be vaccinated in a day or a week, not because the logistics would not follow, but because the challenge is to have enough doses to vaccinate all French people
", a- he warned, however.
Read also: Covid-19: are we lacking doses to vaccinate the 6.4 million priority people?
On Tuesday, the Ministry of Health detailed the figures for planned destocking of vaccines against Covid.
Nearly 500,000 vaccinations are scheduled this week.
France received "
1.67 million doses of Pfizer vaccines, supplemented Monday by a new delivery of 385,000 doses
".
As for Moderna's vaccine, 74,000 additional doses must be delivered next week, then 182,000 and 542,000 respectively in two shipments during the month of February.
For the AstraZeneca vaccine which must obtain its marketing authorization towards the end of January, beginning of February, "
3 million doses must arrive in the first half of February
".
In this regularly updated article,
Le Figaro
offers you a full update on vaccines and the vaccination campaign in France:
Where is the vaccination campaign?
Who can get vaccinated and when?
Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca… What vaccines are available against Covid-19?
Messenger RNA, viral vector, attenuated virus ... What types of vaccine?
Why get vaccinated?
Should we fear side effects?
1. Where is the vaccination campaign?
Caregivers over 50 were able to get vaccinated, here in a gymnasium in Taverny in Ile-de-France.
BENOIT TESSIER / REUTERS
In France.
After a very smooth start, the vaccination campaign that began in France on December 28 has accelerated in recent days.
As of January 19, 2021, 585,664 people
among priority audiences have been vaccinated in France according to figures from the Ministry of Health.
France, which was far behind its European neighbors in terms of the number of vaccinations compared to the population, is catching up even if it is still in the least developed countries behind Greece, Sweden and Switzerland.
The government is targeting
the vaccination of one million people by the end of January
.
According to the Minister for Public Accounts, Olivier Dussopt, the vaccination campaign will cost the State at least 4.3 billion euros.
France is behind Greece, Sweden and Switzerland in number of doses per 100 inhabitants.
Le Figaro
In the world
.
Compared to the size of the population,
it is Israel that leads the vaccination race by far
ahead of the United Arab Emirates and the State of Bahrain.
In general, with a few exceptions such as Israel, the percentage of the population vaccinated remains very low all over the world.
Israel dominates the ranking of countries most advanced in immunization.
Le Figaro
European countries point to the responsibility of the European Commission accused of having been cautious in its orders of vaccine doses.
"We ordered everything that could be",
nevertheless assures the European negotiator with the laboratories.
In total,
the Union has concluded seven contracts
- with Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, CureVac and most recently Valneva -
for a total of 2.5 billion doses
.
And an eighth agreement (with Novavax) is on track.
Enough to vaccinate the entire European population.
Read also: Covid-19: poor and emerging countries, the forgotten in the vaccine race
2. Who can get vaccinated and when?
The vaccination campaign will follow a three-phase schedule.
BENOIT TESSIER / REUTERS
How's it going?
Vaccination against Covid-19 is done in two stages: a first intramuscular injection in the arm, followed by a second after a period of three to six weeks.
•
Until the end of January
, France is in the
first phase of the vaccination campaign
.
After the residents of nursing homes vaccinated as a priority, the staff of establishments welcoming the elderly, caregivers and firefighters over 50 years or fragile can benefit from the vaccine.
From January 18,
people over the age of 75 but also people "
with pathologies leading to a very high risk of severe form of the disease
" (severe chronic renal failure, organ transplant patients, trisomy 21, advanced cancers, etc.), regardless of their age, have the possibility to be vaccinated by appointment in one
of the vaccination centers
open throughout the country.
This potentially affects 6.4 million people.
Registration
is done via the national number
0800 009 110
or by directly calling a vaccination center referenced on sante.fr.
Or by using online medical appointment
booking
platforms -
Doctolib
,
Maiia
and
Keldoc
.
More details in our article:
Read also: Covid-19: how to make an appointment to be vaccinated?
•
In February, the
second phase
of the vaccination campaign (14 million people) will target French people aged over 65 to 74 living at home.
• Finally
in the third quarter of 2021
, the
third phase
extends vaccination firstly to people over 50, then to professionals in sectors essential to the functioning of the country, to vulnerable and precarious people and finally to the rest of the adult population.
The
children and adolescents
are therefore not affected by the vaccination Covid-19.
Should you be vaccinated if you have already had the Covid?
According to the Haute Autorité de santé, there is no need to systematically vaccinate people who have already developed a symptomatic form of Covid-19.
They can however benefit from it with the agreement of their doctor and after a minimum period of 3 months from the onset of symptoms.
3. Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca… What vaccines are available against Covid-19?
AstraZeneca vaccine can be stored in a regular refrigerator.
JOE GIDDENS / AFP
WHO has currently identified 63 candidate vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 in clinical trials in humans around the world.
Of these, 15 have already reached phase 3, where the efficacy of the vaccine is being measured on a large scale.
In Europe,
two vaccines
have so far been authorized by the European Commission after a favorable opinion from the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
That of the German-American
Pfizer / BioNTech
on December 21 and that of the American
Moderna
on January 6.
They immediately obtained marketing authorization from the French National Authority for Health.
Two other vaccines are being evaluated by the EMA: the British
AstraZeneca / Oxford
- which could receive its authorization on January 29 - and the American
Johnson & Johnson / Janssen
.
The German vaccine CureVac has not yet been submitted to the EMA and the only French vaccine, developed by Sanofi Pasteur and GSK, would not be available until the last quarter of 2021.
Read also: Vaccine race: which are the most advanced laboratories?
France has 15% of European vaccine pre-orders, or ultimately
more than 200 million doses
according to the Ministry of Health.
So far, France has around one million doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine and is expected to receive 500,000 new ones per week, then one million per week from March.
By June, 26 million doses of this vaccine will be received, and up to 49 million doses in total.
Only 7 million doses of the Moderna vaccine are expected to be received over the next six months.
Read also: Covid-19: can we choose our vaccine?
4. Messenger RNA, viral vector, attenuated virus ... What types of vaccine?
The vaccines developed against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus use different techniques.
Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines:
These are those from Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna and CureVac.
For the first two already marketed, the announced efficiency rate is 95 and 94%.
This very recent technology uses fragments of RNA from the virus which, once in the body's cells, will make them manufacture viral proteins which will trigger the immune reaction.
This RNA is then quickly eliminated by the body and never enters the nucleus of the cell and has no effect on the genome, specifies the Ministry of Health.
Disadvantage?
They can only be stored long term at very low temperature (-70 ° Celsius for the first, -20 ° C for the second).
Read also: Covid: Can RNA Vaccines Modify Our DNA?
The
"
inactivated vaccines
"
and
"
live attenuated vaccines
": This is the most common method already used for influenza, rubella or measles and developed against the 19-Covid by Chinese Sinovac and Sinopharm.
These vaccines are based on an injection of the whole virus previously rendered harmless in order to trigger an immune response in the event of infection.
Vaccines with a
“
non-replicating viral vector
”
:
These are those of AstraZeneca and Janssen.
A harmless virus is used to carry the genetic material of the coronavirus, making the protein that will trigger an immune response.
While doubts remain about the effectiveness of AstraZeneca's vaccine already deployed in the United Kingdom, it has the advantage of being stored at a refrigerator temperature, between two and eight degrees Celsius.
Read also: Covid-19: unanswered questions about the effectiveness of AstraZeneca's vaccine formula
The vaccine developed by Sanofi Pasteur with the English GSK is based on the
recombinant protein
method
.
We do not present the whole virus, but fragments of its envelope or its envelope emptied of the virus.
Vaccines against hepatitis B or papillomavirus are made using this method.
5. Why get vaccinated?
Vaccination against Covid-19, which is
free
in France, is
not compulsory
.
The goal of the campaign determined by the Ministry of Health is
to reduce the number of severe forms of COVID-19
.
The second more uncertain goal is to reduce the risk of transmission of the virus from person to person.
However, if the vaccine protects against a "
deep
"
infection
, the virus can eventually be transmitted, without causing any symptoms other than a mild cold.
Contagiousness will therefore be lower but not eliminated.
Respect for barrier gestures therefore remains essential pending collective immunity which would not be attainable in 2021 according to the WHO.
For the moment, the government has ruled out the principle of a “vaccination passport” which would allow vaccinated people to access certain services or places.
Read also: Covid-19: why vaccines definitely limit contagiousness
According to an Odoxa-Backbone Consulting survey for
Le Figaro
and Franceinfo, a majority of French people (56%) now want to be protected against Covid-19.
They were 42% before Christmas and the start of the vaccination campaign.
6. Should we fear side effects?
The side effects associated with the anti-Covid vaccines authorized in France
are mainly mild to moderate
: pain at the point of entry of the injection, chills, fevers or headaches.
However, rare cases of serious allergic reactions
have been reported during clinical trials and the first few weeks of vaccination.
Only
one in 100,000 people get
the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine according to US health officials.
If the
benefit / risk ratio is not called into question
for the general population, the High Authority for Health has therefore decided not to recommend vaccination "
to people who have presented serious allergic manifestations such as anaphylactic reactions
".
The vaccine is of course contraindicated in the event of hypersensitivity to the active substance or to one of its excipients.
Read also: Vaccine against Covid-19: reassuring safety data on adverse effects
The National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health
Products (ANSM) has set up a specific reinforced monitoring system for the adverse effects of anti-Covid-19 vaccines on French territory.
On signalement-sante.gouv.fr, health professionals and users can report any adverse effects following vaccination.
According to its last report of January 19, “
since the start of the vaccination, 139 cases of adverse effects have been reported with the Comirnaty vaccine from Pfizer / BioNTech, including about twenty serious adverse effects. [...] Among these declarations, 5 cases of death were reported.
These were elderly people living in EHPAD or in old age residences who all had chronic illnesses and heavy treatments.
In view of the information available to us to date, there is nothing to conclude that the deaths reported are linked to vaccination.
"