Taravao (France) (AFP)

A "safe, rapid and continuous" gesture is needed, explains Sergeant Julien Cudejko, a firefighter from Paris, to the twelve Polynesian firefighters who have come to train in injections in order to participate in the effort to catch up with the vaccination against the Covid .

A nurse for the capital's firefighters, he is one of the 20 firefighters who arrived Sunday, September 5 from mainland France as reinforcements in Polynesia, who were distributed to participate in interventions alongside local firefighters, but also to provide reinforcement on vaccination .

"Before being authorized to vaccinate people, there is training, and today we have training aimed at the firefighters of Teva I Uta and Puna'auia", indicates the commander Olivier Omont of the SDIS du Nord. , who is also the head of the detachment of 20 firefighters who came as reinforcements.

In Polynesia, 249 people are still hospitalized, including 43 in intensive care, and 575 people have succumbed to Covid.

Almost 150,000 people have received at least one dose of vaccine out of a population of 280,000.

Faced with the epidemic wave that hit the territory in August, Polynesia embarked on a marathon to raise to 70% the level of vaccination of a sometimes reluctant population, after the slow start of its injection campaign.

"Our objective", explains Commander Omont, "is to anticipate a possible relaunch of the Covid and therefore to prepare as many firefighters as possible for vaccination, so that they are autonomous when our mission ends in a ten days ".

After half an hour of theoretical lessons, the firefighters move on to practice: they have to repeat the gestures they have just learned on a training dummy, the texture of which is reminiscent of human skin.

"The training that we have acquired today will not only make it possible to vaccinate firefighters who are not yet vaccinated", but above all to have "additional manpower to vaccinate" in the municipalities which request it, always in presence of doctors, indicates for his part Gaston Tuno, the head of the center of the municipality of Teva I Uta and president of the Polynesian federation of firefighters.

"As firefighters, we know the geography of our municipalities well, the objective is for people who cannot move, that we come to them, if they ask," he explains. .

- vaccination marathon -

According to Commander Omont, "a sharing of experiences is done on a day-to-day basis" between the metropolitan and Polynesian firefighters: "We live in total inclusion in the rescue centers, which allows us to share our professional experiences or to training".

The Teva I Uta firefighters were indeed faced with a sudden increase in their activity with the surge of the Delta variant on Polynesia.

"We did, on average, about 3 to 4 interventions a day, there we went up to 32 interventions in 24 hours", testifies Gaston Tuno.

"We were able to manage, not easily but intelligently," he says.

"I asked for volunteer firefighters who would like to be put in a reinforcement group to intervene only for the Covid".

They were "confined to the barracks", without contact with other firefighters, or with their families.

To avoid any contamination, they slept "on spiked beds outside".

In addition, thanks to the mayor of the town, "we have anticipated in order to be able to acquire equipment to be ready".

So "we have equipment until the end of the year, just in case, if there is a peak again", explains Gaston Tuno.

© 2021 AFP