The High Authority for Health clarified Monday its recommendations on the vaccine policy of France, which should be organized into five phases, depending on the availability of doses of the first available vaccines.
Didier Pittet, infectious disease specialist, reviews the different phases in Europe 1.
INTERVIEW
The High Health Authority unveiled its recommendations on Monday for the future vaccine policy in France.
It recommends five phases of vaccination, depending on the number of vaccine doses available and the vulnerability of people to Covid-19 and its severe forms.
On Europe 1, Didier Pittet, infectious disease specialist, head of the infection prevention and control service at Geneva University Hospitals recalls that at the start of the campaign, the phase intended for 700,000 nursing home residents, only one vaccine will surely be available .
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Prioritization necessary
"There will certainly be a start of vaccination for which there will be only one choice. This vaccine will be used in nursing homes. And then, when the least vulnerable will be vaccinated, there will be more choices", explains the infectious disease specialist.
However, this prioritization towards the oldest people, and therefore the most vulnerable, is necessary according to him.
"People in nursing homes are very vulnerable. We have seen a lot of deaths in these places, unfortunately. It is certain that we can both visit them because they are protected from disease, and live their end of life in good conditions, it is the right choice ", underlines Didier Pittet.
"When you have to choose between side effects, most of the time extremely modest, and a risk to your life, so that your family can keep coming to see you, I believe the choice is quickly made."
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The first available should be the American-German Pfizer-Biontech vaccine, but it should be stored between -70 and -80 degrees.
It will therefore be necessary to implement special logistics to transport the doses.
"Some vaccines will be easier to administer to certain people than to others," says Didier Pittet.
"The plan is ready but as always, a plan remains a plan. To 'set it to music' there are always small difficulties and in particular, you need these famous freezers, which are not rare but you will have to acquire some in plenty of space to be able to get the vaccine doses to the place of inoculation. "
More vaccines therefore more choice in logistics
The existence of several vaccines will therefore make it possible to relieve, secondly, the logistical organization since not all of them require such drastic storage and circulation conditions.
Some, for example, can be stored simply in the refrigerator, while others "will only be available in multidoses", explains the infectious disease specialist.
“From the moment you open a box, you have to inject five to ten people depending on the vaccines. This presents another organizational challenge,” he adds.
"You have to know that this will take time. Health personnel will also be a priority. Between health personnel and those in nursing homes, there are about 1.5 million people. When we extend to vulnerable people, we arrive quickly at 30 million, which makes 60 million doses ", recalls Didier Pittet.
"Fortunately there will be several vaccines, but that is a lot of doses to administer that will not be available immediately. It will take a schedule that will span the whole year or even more than a year.
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"As a patient, you will have the choice to be vaccinated or not. And ideally, this choice could be discussed with your attending physician", also reassures Didier Pittet.
"We do not have all the answers on all the vaccines that will be available, but there are more than a dozen that are very advanced in the race."
A necessary race according to the infectious disease specialist, since all the vaccines discovered will be useful and will allow the entire population to be reached.
Unlike Germany, France has not yet planned to set up vaccination centers.
"I do not believe that there are better strategies but that everyone organizes themselves according to their capacities. For the moment setting up large-scale vaccination centers is not yet useful since the doses of vaccines which have already been allocated between countries, are not sufficient to justify the use of centers ", comments the infectious disease specialist.
"It is not excluded that during the summer, if the companies which produce these vaccines, can produce the large quantities which have been ordered, it is necessary to open special vaccination centers, called 'mass'". "