The Ministry of Health announced Thursday that all French adults can now make an appointment to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
At the same time, the epidemic situation is improving in France with less than 18,000 people hospitalized and "only" 3,200 patients in critical care.
Follow the evolution of the situation live.
New step in the vaccination campaign.
All French adults can now reserve a time slot to receive a vaccine against the coronavirus, announced the Ministry of Health.
In addition, Sanofi has announced that it is launching phase 3 of its vaccine candidate.
This phase consists of large-scale trials involving 35,000 people in several countries.
In France, the evolution of the pandemic remains positive, with now less than 18,000 hospitalized patients.
In Melbourne, on the other hand, millions of inhabitants are forced to reconfigure themselves.
Follow the evolution of the situation live.
The main information to remember:
- All French adults can make an appointment to be vaccinated
- Bruno Le Maire wants to postpone the summer sales from June 23 to 30
- Sanofi launches large-scale trials of its vaccine candidate
- Millions of residents re-confined to Melbourne
Vaccination: all adults can now make an appointment
All adults can now make an appointment to be vaccinated against Covid-19, the Ministry of Health announced to AFP on Thursday.
Making appointments on internet booking platforms has been extended to 18-49 year olds since 11:00 a.m.
For them, the meetings will begin on May 31, the date of the official opening of vaccination to all adults in France, after the gradual lifting of the conditions of age or state of health initially in force.
"Reservations will be progressive, new slots posted online every day on the various platforms", for his part assured the Minister, Olivier Véran, on Twitter.
"People 50 and over who are already eligible can obviously continue to make an appointment," the ministry said.
Are you 18 and over?
Since this morning, you can make an appointment to be vaccinated from May 31.
Reservations will be progressive, with new slots posted every day on the various platforms.
Protect ourselves against the virus.
- Olivier Véran (@olivierveran) May 27, 2021
"This new step will not, however, make it possible to meet all the demand from patients", for its part warned Doctolib in a press release, pointing to "a still limited number of doses of vaccines, in particular Pfizer and Moderna".
"28 million adults are eligible for vaccination and not vaccinated to date for an average of 500,000 appointments available each day", continues the main booking platform, which "expects a large influx of its services".
A website to retrieve your vaccination certificate
Health Insurance announced Thursday the opening of a website allowing people vaccinated against Covid-19 to retrieve their "certified vaccination certificates", which will then be used to activate the French "health pass" and to travel to France. 'foreign. The attestation-vaccin.ameli.fr site "has been open since 8:30 am" and had already received "more than 3,000 visits" at the end of the morning, said the director of the National Health Insurance Fund, Thomas Fatôme, during a press conference. To access this new service, you must identify yourself with FranceConnect, which already serves as a virtual sesame to many online public services.
The certificate can then be downloaded and, if necessary, printed.
It includes a QR Code to scan, to integrate the vaccination certificate into the TousAntiCovid application.
People vaccinated before May 3 are particularly concerned, since since that date the document is supposed to be delivered in paper format after each injection.
Bruno Le Maire wants to postpone the sales to June 30
The Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire wants the summer sales to start on June 30, instead of the 23 as planned so far, he said on Thursday. Noting that the postponement of the summer sales last year was not a good thing for all traders, he considered "wiser not to excessively postpone the date of the sales (...) I suggest that it is postponed to June 30, "said the minister on France Inter. This new date will be formalized quickly by the Minister responsible for SMEs Alain Griset, said Bruno Le Maire.
The sales period is scheduled so far from June 23 to July 20.
The minister, who wants stores to benefit from "the rebound in French consumption".
did not mention the track put forward last week by Prime Minister Jean Castex according to which the government was studying the possibility of introducing a territorial differentiation for the sales period.
The issue of sales is a crucial issue for many businesses, while many have stocks left over from several seasons, due to the Covid-19 epidemic.
>> ALSO READ -
Coronavirus: what results for the reopening of "non-essential" businesses?
Sanofi launches large-scale trials of its main vaccine project
The French Sanofi takes an important step in its anti-Covid-19 vaccine project. After months of delay, it is finally starting large-scale trials, the last step before a launch promised for the end of the year. Sanofi and the British GSK, which supplies it with its adjuvant, "are starting an international phase 3 study to assess the effectiveness of their candidate vaccine against (the) Covid-19", the French group said in a statement Thursday, ten days after the announcement of encouraging results after initial trials.
The latter, carried out on a few hundred people, showed that this vaccine causes the production of antibodies against the coronavirus in most of the subjects to which it has been injected.
But it is the trials announced this Thursday that should give a real idea of the effectiveness against Covid-19 of this vaccine, for which GSK provides the adjuvant.
They will be carried out with some 35,000 people in multiple countries, including the United States.
Objective for Sanofi: a launch at the end of 2021. Already communicated by the group, this schedule would bring its product to the market almost a year after the first vaccines approved against Covid-19.
>> READ ALSO
- Doctors warn against the "vaccinee syndrome", this relaxation after the first dose
The decline continues in the hospital
Fewer than 18,000 Covid-19 patients hospitalized, just over 3,200 in intensive care: the pressure on hospitals continued to decline this Thursday, according to data published by Public Health France.
17,941 patients with Covid-19 are currently hospitalized.
The number of hospitalizations, which had exceeded 31,000 at the height of the third wave, in mid-April, had fallen below 20,000 on Saturday for the first time since October 27.
Critical care services (a name that includes intensive care, intensive care and continuing care) counted 3,206 patients on Wednesday, against 3,330 the day before and 3,862 a week ago.
>> READ ALSO -
What does the project for a new occupational health protocol provide?
Immediate containment of millions of Melbourne residents
More than five million people in Melbourne, Australia's second largest city, have been ordered to self-confine as of midnight Thursday following the outbreak of a Covid-19 outbreak. This seven-day confinement concerns the city of Melbourne as well as the state of Victoria which surrounds it, declared the acting Prime Minister of this state, James Merlino, while the number of cases related to this cluster has doubled, passing to 26. For a week, residents will only be allowed to leave their homes for urgent needs, in particular to be vaccinated.
"We are dealing with a highly infectious strain of the virus, a disturbing variant, which is spreading faster than anything we have ever recorded," said James Merlino.
This variant B.1.617, detected in India for the first time, shows increased transmissibility.
James Merlino has accused the conservative federal government of being partly behind this lockdown due to the slow pace of the coronavirus vaccination campaign.
"If more people were vaccinated, the circumstances would be very different from those we know today. But unfortunately, this is not the case," he said.
Only 3.7 million doses administered to a population of 25 million inhabitants.
CORONAVIRUS ESSENTIALS
> Reopening of terraces: what risk of Covid contamination outdoors?
> "I'm afraid ...": the cabin syndrome, or the fear of resuming a normal life
> Covid: the countries which have done the opposite of us "have been better on all fronts"
> Coronavirus: why can a PCR test be positive one month after infection?
> Reopening of the terraces: how to indulge yourself while eating a balanced diet
More than 3.5 million dead
The pandemic has killed more than 3.5 million people worldwide since the end of December 2019, according to a report established by AFP from official sources on Thursday.
After the United States (591,957), the countries with the highest number of deaths are Brazil (454,429), India (315,235), Mexico (222,232) and the United Kingdom (127,748).
These figures, which are based on daily reports from national health authorities, are generally underestimated.
They exclude the upward revisions carried out a posteriori by certain statistical organizations.
By taking into account the excess mortality directly and indirectly linked to Covid-19, the WHO estimates that the real toll of the pandemic is "two to three times higher".