Paris (AFP)

The ex-LR president of the Hauts-de-France region Xavier Bertrand estimated that Emmanuel Macron had committed "an extremely serious fault" with his vaccination strategy which "leads us inevitably to failure", in an interview with the Parisian published Monday evening.

"He will have to explain it to the French," said the possible right-wing candidate for the 2022 presidential election.

Because "a failure means that we, the French, will not be protected against the Covid, with an economic and social life which does not resume its rights and an unbearable downgrading", he added.

Believing that vaccination should be "the national priority" with "a general public promotion campaign", Mr. Bertrand called on the executive to "be fully transparent" on the number of vaccines available.

"We cannot relive the same official lie as on the masks, this fiasco where the doctrine was guided by the shortage", he affirmed.

To speed up the pace, he mentioned "oral consent, and not written" to vaccination, or the idea of ​​entrusting the logistics to "private logisticians who know how to do an army health service".

But "all this can only work with deep decentralization and by working with local elected officials", he added, saying himself ready to open vaccination centers "in our public spaces or high schools" .

We must also "of course" buy doses in addition to those ordered by Europe, he said, even if it means paying more for the vaccine: "human health is priceless," said M Bertrand, who would like "to be sure that we haven't cut corners on prices, which would explain why we are not given priority for deliveries".

Pleading him also to change "completely the approach", the president LR of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region Laurent Wauquiez called for "all of us to engage in favor of vaccination, with the political will of all elected officials, from the president to the mayor of the smallest municipality ".

Criticizing the "ultracentralized piloting" of the vaccine strategy, he praised in Le Figaro "the German model of collaboration between the State and the regions".

"It is necessary to entrust to the regions and to the local communities the organization of the logistic modalities of the vaccination campaign in a decentralized way", insisted Mr. Wauquiez, whose name is also sometimes mentioned for 2022.

© 2021 AFP