• First population targeted by the vaccine campaign against Covid-19, nursing home residents have to date almost all been vaccinated.

  • The Ministry of Health thus indicates that 100% of residents have received their first dose of vaccine.

  • But the sector specifies that each month, nursing homes welcome thousands of new residents who often arrive without having yet had access to the vaccine.

    Hence his call for a stock of doses to be secure for the coming months.

Goal achieved.

To date in France, 100% of residents of nursing homes and long-term care units (USLDs) have received their first injection of anti-Covid vaccine, according to the latest figures from the Ministry of Health.

And 76% have already received their two doses.

For the others, it is only a matter of days before receiving their second injection, since for nursing home residents, the time between the two doses is only 21 days, to ensure them protection against the most optimal and rapid coronavirus possible.

Obviously, the figures have something to celebrate.

But does this mean that Covid-19 is for good outside nursing homes and that all residents have been vaccinated?

Not quite.

Significant renewal of residents

99% Sunday. 100% this Tuesday. The Ministry of Health closely monitors and updates these figures on a daily basis for nursing home residents. Maximum vaccination coverage, but which may be slightly out of step with the reality on the ground. “The 100% announced are based on the overall capacity of nursing homes and USLDs to vaccinate. The "real" figures turn rather around 90 to 92% of first doses administered, indicates Yann Reboulleau, director of Philogeris Residences, a group of a dozen nursing homes. Which is still very good, he adds. In reality, we are not at 100% ”. For its methodology, Public Health France specifies that “due to the impossibility of identifying the target populations as such in the Covid vaccine [the digital vaccination monitoring tool],algorithms have been put in place in order to best estimate the target populations on the basis of the available data ”, and notably recalls“ the absence of coding for residents in nursing homes or USLDs ”.

But above all, “when the vaccination started, the nursing homes were not full, and in recent months, there have been a lot of new residents arriving,” underlines Yann Reboulleau.

Outside the particular context of the pandemic, there are on average 15,000 residents who die each month in France, or about 180,000 per year.

It is a reality: this public comes to spend the last part of its life in nursing homes.

Since the beginning of the year, thousands of new residents have settled in nursing homes, and what we observe is that they arrive mostly unvaccinated.

These are often elderly people who lived in isolation at home, already severely losing their autonomy and who therefore did not have the opportunity to go for the vaccine before their arrival ”.

"We cannot prevent the Covid-19 from circulating"

Problem: the virus is still there. “We cannot prevent the Covid-19 from circulating. Two-thirds of nursing homes have been confronted with it and it will continue to circulate as long as the epidemic is in progress, estimates Yann Reboulleau. Of course, we will no longer have clusters of several dozen people as we were able to know during the first two waves, but contamination remains possible. As we can see, there are cases identified in different nursing homes where residents have yet been vaccinated. The good news is that these are mild or even asymptomatic cases, and health protocols and barrier gestures are still required. But inevitably, a new resident who arrives unvaccinated always risks catching the disease and especially of developing a serious form ”.

And after long months of difficult isolation for the residents, there is no longer any question for them to go through it again. “The virus must no longer collectively impact establishments, which must operate under normal conditions. Residents are deprived of all the little pleasures of this moment in their life: contact with loved ones, the opportunity to see their grandchildren, to share a family meal, to go out for a walk, he laments. Nothing justifies putting the establishments under cover: when we look at the figures of the third wave, we observe that it does not affect nursing homes and the very elderly, unlike the first two. If it had not been for vaccination in nursing homes, mortality would undoubtedly have been even higher than during previous waves. Today,we have to let the residents live ”.

Secure vaccine doses for new residents

Hence the capital importance of ensuring the vaccination of these new residents.

“The evolution of the epidemic in nursing homes demonstrates the relevance of having vaccinated the elderly as a priority.

The vaccination is a huge relief.

This is why it is imperative to continuously supply nursing homes with 100,000 doses per month until June, then 50,000 monthly doses, in order to continue to protect new residents and staff until the end of the year. , and reassure families ”, abounds Florence Arnaiz-Maumé, general delegate of SYNERPA, the first union of private nursing homes.

"There will be fewer and fewer, but as long as there are elderly people at home not yet vaccinated, we will see new residents who have not been vaccinated, to whom we must be able to administer an anti-Covid serum as soon as possible. their arrival, adds Yann Reboulleau.

To do this, doses must be secured, and specific supply methods must be maintained ”.

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