While field reports show a low proportion of Covid-19 vaccination among hospital caregivers, the virus circulates a lot in health establishments, where it has become the first nosocomial disease.

Professionals are now calling for compulsory vaccination for all medical staff. 

DECRYPTION

This is news that augurs well for an acceleration of the vaccination campaign against Covid-19: the High Authority of Health (HAS) recommended, Tuesday, to extend the authorization of the AstraZeneca vaccine to over 65s.

While only three million French people have received at least one dose of the vaccine against the disease at this stage, the government is counting on a target of six million by the end of March.

For this, the authorities must manage a problem: that of the hospital, where the field reports show a weak vaccination.

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Hospital workers have "the same fears" as the rest of the French

The precise results of a study by Public Health France at the national level are awaited.

But we already know that the trend is not very encouraging.

For example, only 34% of caregivers in Paris hospitals have been vaccinated to date.

"Our fridges are full of vaccines, it's a disaster", also confides a department head of a hospital in Marseille.

"The main argument is the lack of perspective from the vaccine.", Testifies Antoine, a nursing assistant in a hospital in the capital, and of which no colleague wanted to be vaccinated.

"You have to understand that hospital workers are the image of the entire population. They have the same fears."

An inadmissible argument for many public health specialists, who point out that 100 million people in the world have already been vaccinated without having been able to observe serious side effects.

44,000 people contracted Covid-19 in hospital

However, this weak enthusiasm of caregivers for vaccination has a serious consequence: we are catching more and more Covid-19 in hospitals - it has even become the first nosocomial disease.

Since the start of the epidemic, 44,000 people have contracted the virus in hospitals.

And in a third of cases, it is health personnel who are at the origin of the contamination. 

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Towards compulsory vaccination for caregivers? 

"We come to the hospital to have our gall bladder removed and we go to intensive care with the Covid, this is not quite normal," protested François Chast, honorary president of the Academy of Pharmacy.

"This situation cannot go on any longer, this vaccine is effective. It is well tolerated. So, we have a duty today, it is not to incite, but to oblige all hospital workers, all caregivers, but also the doctors in town too, of course, to be vaccinated ", he urges.

"Because it is the only way to reduce or even eradicate the disease in a matter of months." 

The professional is far from alone in asking the government to make vaccination compulsory for caregivers.

With an argument that they all repeat: "When they are recruited, health workers never ask themselves the question of the obligation of vaccination against diphtheria, tetanus, polio, BCG and hepatitis B. So you don't have to ask yourself the question about vaccines against Covid. "