Prime Minister Jean Castex announced on Saturday afternoon that a million French people were now vaccinated against the coronavirus, four weeks after the start of the vaccination campaign.
The government had set this target at the end of January.
About 15 million people are due to be vaccinated by June.
One million people have been vaccinated against the coronavirus in France.
This was announced by Prime Minister Jean Castex on Saturday mid-afternoon, four weeks after the start of the vaccination campaign.
The government, which still hopes to counter the growing pressure in hospitals and avoid a third confinement, had set for the end of January the goal of one million vaccinated.
Earlier today, Minister Delegate for Industry Agnès Pannier-Runacher said she was "reasonably confident" that France would exceed its goal of vaccinating "15 million people" by June.
1 million French people vaccinated.
pic.twitter.com/domYssnqcj
- Jean Castex (@JeanCASTEX) January 23, 2021
The High Authority for Health recommends the spacing of the two injections of the vaccine
She also wanted to be reassuring about the delivery of doses: "We have new vaccines arriving, we have Pfizer which is increasing its production capacities," she added on France Inter.
For its part, the High Authority for Health (HAS) described Saturday as "reasonable" the possibility of spacing the injection of the two doses of the Covid vaccines by six weeks (instead of three to four weeks currently), in order to protect the most vulnerable and face the "epidemic outbreak".
The extension of the injection time will make it possible to "accelerate the administration of the first dose to the most vulnerable people", that is, according to the projections of the HAS, at least 700,000 additional people "who would be protected by the vaccine" on the first month of application of this measure.
At the individual level, "the risk of loss of efficacy" of the vaccine between two doses "seems limited", indicates the HAS.