Olivier Véran during his vaccination against Covid-19, February 8, 2021 in Melun (illustration).

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Thomas Samson / AP / SIPA

  • By announcing, Monday March 22, the next opening of at least 35 vaccine pods against Covid-19, Olivier Véran intends to accelerate the national campaign launched at the end of December.

  • However, this choice earned him criticism from elected officials who had long demanded the establishment of these large vaccination spaces, and had been opposed by the government, which favored local vaccination centers, smaller in size.

  • "There has never been an anti-vaccinodrome religion", defended the Minister of Health in this regard, while he was skeptical of their relevance in recent months. 

This is a major change of course in the French anti-Covid-19 vaccination strategy: the upcoming opening, in France, of at least 35 vaccinodromes in order to be able to use all the doses delivered from April.

By announcing, Monday, March 22, the development by the health service of the armed forces of "a certain number of large vaccination centers - [which one can] call" vaccinodromes "or" mega-centers "", Olivier Véran saw himself criticize by some elected officials a turnaround of the latest.

Many of them have been calling for the opening of such spaces for a long time ... without success, the government having until then relied on a proximity strategy based on the deployment of smaller local centers but better distributed over the territory. and more.

However, according to Olivier Véran, the Ministry of Health was not fundamentally hostile to these mega-centers installed in stadiums, hangars or gymnasiums and capable of vaccinating thousands of people every day, to which certain European neighbors have been resorting for several months, such as Germany.

“There has never been an anti-vaccinodrome religion.

[…] The principle that I supported and that I claim, […] was that of not sacrificing proximity on the altar of efficiency ”, he said yesterday during a debate in the National Assembly on the vaccine strategy against the Covid-19 epidemic.

According to him, the fact of resorting now, as an additional means, to vaccinodromes, is justified "because the deliveries [of vaccines] will increase massively in ten days.

"And that this will allow" to vaccinate several thousand people per day ".

Still, Olivier Véran has not failed to repeat, in recent months, his skepticism at the idea of ​​resorting to vaccinodromes.

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On December 17, 2020, when detailing the government's anti-Covid-19 vaccine strategy in the Senate, the Minister of Health was already hinting at these structures by extolling the merits of local authorities: "[They] may perhaps be able to assist with vaccination in remote nursing homes, identify isolated elderly people or make small vaccine centers available, and not huge vaccinodromes.

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On December 21, a few days before the launch of the vaccination campaign at European level, Olivier Véran said at the microphone of Europe 1: “The other meaning that we want to give to this French campaign is that of confidence.

We are not rushing.

This is why you do not see images of vaccinodromes, which is why I am not announcing to you this morning that there will be 200,000 French people vaccinated on December 27.

It wouldn't make sense, we are not in that emergency.

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Two days after the launch of the vaccination campaign, it was during a TV news from France 2 (from 15'08 on the replay) that the Minister of Health justified the non-use of vaccinodromes by the failure of the management of the H1N1 influenza ten years earlier: “The Germans made a choice, they set up large vaccinodromes - we had tried in France [during the H1N1 crisis], it didn't hadn't worked.

We made another choice in France that I claim.

In 2009, only a little more than 5 million French people were in fact vaccinated in these large spaces while the government was targeting a total of 65 million vaccinated.

Doubts clearly expressed in early January

But it is especially on January 4, 2021, when the government was under fire from criticism for the slowness of its vaccination campaign, that Olivier Véran most openly displays his opposition to vaccinodromes during a speech. in front of the Hôtel-Dieu: "I am not at all certain - this is my opinion - that [vaccination] should take the form of large stadiums in which thousands of people would line up in the middle of winter".

Olivier Véran is not in favor of "large stadiums in which thousands of people would line up in the middle of winter" to be vaccinated pic.twitter.com/mrqIoxH4ps

- BFMTV (@BFMTV) January 4, 2021

An argument repeated by the minister a week later on the Cnews antenna: "We will have ten times more centers than most of our neighbors to prevent 80-year-old French people from queuing for 3 hours outside in the middle of winter and to travel 350 km to be vaccinated ”.

From now on, he believes that the small centers and mega-centers are completely complementary, as he assumed, Monday, in front of the deputies.

“Some countries have chosen to have 40 or 50 vaccination centers.

Elderly people, in their eighties, sometimes have to carry out 2 hours, 2 hours and a half of transport, wait 2 hours in the cold of winter before entering a vaccinodrome.

We considered that to vaccinate elderly populations, often isolated at home, having more than 1,000 centers on the national territory was a guarantee of proximity.

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