Paris (AFP)
The suspension of the AstraZeneca vaccine in France, as in its European neighbors, puts the brakes on the vaccination campaign against Covid-19 at a time when the epidemic situation and in the hospital is increasingly tense in Ile -of France.
These are a few days lost, at least, in the race against time between the vaccine and the Covid-19 epidemic, which again killed 333 hospitals in France and caused the entry of 401 new patients infected with the coronavirus in an intensive care unit between Sunday and Monday.
"We are waiting, I hope (...) for a form of verdict from the European scientific community allowing us (...) to be able to resume the campaign," said Minister of Health Olivier Véran on Tuesday morning. , during a visit to a school in Villiers-le-Bel (Val-d'Oise).
The European Medicines Agency will give an "update" on the AstraZeneca vaccine on Tuesday at 2:00 p.m.
The EMA has already reaffirmed that the benefits of the product outweigh the risks.
- "Atypical" -
The government, which has promised at least 10 million first injections by mid-April, 20 million by mid-May and 30 million by the summer, is counting in particular on this vaccine, the third authorized in Europe, to keep up.
Are the objectives called into question?
"If the suspension were to persist, or partially, yes, to a certain extent but not completely," replied on France Inter the chairman of the Steering Committee for the vaccine strategy, Prof. Alain Fischer, recalling that the laboratory vaccine Anglo-Swedish "represents about 30.35% of the doses that must be administered in April".
Of more than 5.2 million first doses injected in France, 1.3 million come from AstraZeneca, the others being vaccines from Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna.
Like several European countries, such as Germany or Italy, France on Monday suspended the use of this vaccine due to a few cases of blood clots in people who had received the injection.
"The situation is that there have been new alerts coming from different European countries (...) it is in a series of vaccinated people the occurrence of thromboses with coagulation abnormalities that we do not have. usual to see in classic pulmonary embolism, "explained Alain Fischer.
"We revolve around ten cases, it is very small but it is the atypical character that justifies this special attention," he added.
- "Not in danger" -
"People are not in danger because they would have been vaccinated by AstraZeneca", whose second dose occurs between 9 and 12 weeks, insisted on his side Olivier Véran.
This slowdown comes at a time when the hospital tension worsens a little more in France.
While the capacities of resuscitation services have been saturated for several weeks in the Hauts-de-France and Provence Alpes-Côtes d'Azur regions, the number of patients in these critical care services exceeded the peak of the second wave of autumn in Ile-de-France, at 1,166 Monday, out of 4,219 Covid-19 patients throughout France.
And a new variant of the SARS-CoV2 coronavirus has been detected in Brittany, the Directorate General of Health (DGS) announced Monday evening, specifying that investigations were underway to assess its transmissibility and severity.
One year to the day after the first confinement, the Covid-19, whose death toll stands at 90,788, still weighs heavily on daily lives: curfew at 6:00 p.m. in mainland France and confinement on weekends in the worst territories. most affected, restaurants, bars, cultural venues and private sports halls closed for more than four months, students welcomed in droplets in universities.
The circulation of the virus, marked by the spread of the English variant, more contagious, is not slowing down in Ile-de-France, the most populous region of the country (12 million inhabitants).
The incidence rate reached 404 new cases of contamination per 100,000 inhabitants over the last seven days in the region, well above the so-called "maximum alert" threshold of the health authorities (250).
President Emmanuel Macron assured Monday that "new decisions" would be taken in "the coming days".
According to the Elysee Palace, he will receive a delegation from the scientific committee at 5 p.m. on Tuesday to take stock of the situation, before a meeting by videoconference with resuscitators.
But any decisions will only be taken during the health defense council, scheduled for Wednesday morning.
© 2021 AFP