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  • There is no point in running, you have to start on time, it seems.

    Faced with the coronavirus, France has less than a hundred people vaccinated, when in other countries, they number in the tens or hundreds of thousands, even millions.

  • A strategy that the government seems to assume, defending this pace.

  • So why such slowness when other Nations are accelerating?

Since the start this weekend of the European vaccination campaign against the coronavirus, comparisons between France and Germany have bloomed again about health management.

And as in the spring during the first wave, the figures are bad for Paris.

In two days, France had vaccinated 50 people on Monday.

Germany, which admittedly began vaccination on Saturday, had more than 18,000.

Denmark 4,800.

Leaving the European Union, the United Kingdom injected the vaccine to 800,000 residents in two weeks, and the United States is at two million.

Israel had 500,000 people vaccinated in nine days.

Fear of haste

There is no acceleration planned in France this week, since over the next few days, vaccination will be limited to 23 nursing homes in only four cities.

And it is Alain Fischer himself, president of the Steering Committee for the anti-Covid-19 vaccine strategy, who showered the hope of a rise in power by declaring Monday evening, on Europe 1: "C ' It is good that we do not go faster ”, we must“ not rush ”.

France therefore plans to vaccinate a million people by… the end of February.

Even if patience is the mother of virtue, why such a rhythm?

Let's get rid of the question of doses right away.

France has at least 60,000 doses, a figure which should rise to one million by December 31, and further increase in January, without a massive acceleration being planned.

So what can be the reasons?

The complexity of vaccination in nursing homes

First, our vaccine strategy differs from other countries.

Eric Billy, researcher in immuno-oncology in Strasbourg, takes the example of the United States, where caregivers are among the first to be vaccinated.

However, a caregiver can be vaccinated much more easily than a person in nursing home: consent easier to obtain without going through any tutors, massive presence in the same place (large CHU in particular), a place where they are also generally stored vaccines, where nursing homes generate "enormous logistical complexity", according to the researcher.

For Michaël Rochoy, general practitioner, researcher in epidemiology and member of the collective "On the side of science", the choice can also be political: "There is a political fear that rapid vaccination leads to greater rejection and hope. that the support of the population will be stronger with a very gradual rise.

»To reassure by taking his time, in short, among a very skeptical population.

A BVA poll carried out from December 11 to 14 showed that 56% of French people would not want to be vaccinated against Covid-19.

Studies in the United States nevertheless show that the more people are vaccinated, the more the general population adheres to the vaccine, in a kind of snowball effect.

The% of people who now say they are certain or likely to get the vaccine has risen from 50% this summer to over 60%, and in a recent poll to 73%.

The more we vaccinate, the more it reassures, which is a logical mechanism.

# COVID19 #vaccination https://t.co/v1Ffq3NOuI pic.twitter.com/U5Ix7Lwmue

- The Doc (@Le___Doc) December 29, 2020

Logistics blur

For the moment, the government is rather spared in the explanations of the two researchers, but for them, we must not be mistaken: the management is bad.

Eric Billy sounds the charge: “Nothing is programmed, everything is done a little French, at the last moment.

Three or four weeks before the vaccines arrived, France decided who was going to be vaccinated first.

But in the functional and the operational, nothing is ready ”.

Not to mention that the plan was initially based on the arrival of the Sanofi vaccine, more easily deployable, but whose arrival is constantly being delayed.

“The French plan had no flexibility, the Sanofi vaccine arriving later, we did not or little to anticipate changes.

"

Too much is the enemy of good

For Michaël Rochoy, the government might be too perfectionist, as for the masks.

The doctor recalls the first months of the first wave, when government recommendations were not to make your own fabric mask but to wait for the masks ordered by France to arrive.

“When France is overtaken, it prefers to delay than to launch into intermediate situations,” he notes.

In this case, the government would like perfect traceability of the vaccine, with the SI-DEP system, which would allow each vaccination to be listed numerically.

System which - unfortunately - is not currently ready.

"France has perhaps chosen to postpone a mass vaccination for several weeks to be sure to be able to trace everything?

»Asks Michaël Rochoy.

A hypothesis that would confirm the choice to start with nursing homes, where traceability is very simple.

Towards another failure?

Where there is no doubt for Michaël Rochoy, it is on the fact that “the government has totally failed on the masks”, and that “it is in the process of totally missing out on the vaccines.

According to the doctor, for the masks, he could justify not having anticipated such a global pandemic.

But "on vaccines, planned for months it will be more difficult to clear customs".

By the time of this writing, fifteen more people have been vaccinated in France, bringing the total to 70. That is 0.000001% of the French population.

Patience, we said.

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