French Health Minister Olivier Véran assured doctors that, contrary to a note issued by top health officials at the weekend, the government was not going to indefinitely suspend their capacity for delivering the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine.
“From the end of this week, we will allow doctors to resume placing orders for the doses they need for the week of 22 March,” Véran said from a hospital in the central Burgundy region.
The remarks represent an about-face from a controversial note sent from the office of director general of health Jérôme Salomon on Sunday reading that the vaccine would be reserved for pharmacists, who were to begin giving jabs next week.
Officially, the note said the decision had to do with the reduced number of doses promised by AstraZeneca, which has said that by the end of March, it will only deliver 4.6 million doses of the 17.5 million originally ordered.
Angry doctors
But doctors reacted angrily to the note, saying the decision reflected the disorganisation of France’s vaccine campaign, the pace of which has drawn wide criticism.
“I am surprised and shocked,” general practitioner Deborah Smadja told France Info television. “They push doctors to give the jab, and as soon as we’re able to organise the schedule and supplies, they tell us no.”
Meanwhile, in #France 🇫🇷, the government has stepped up #inoculation effort against the #coronavirus, by creating #vaccination centres to ease the load on hospitals and stave off further restrictions🦠💉
— FRANCE 24 English (@France24_en) March 9, 2021
But doctors say they can't get their hands on the doses ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/iPO073bPPO
MG France, a union representing general practitioners, said the decision would make it necessary to cancel appointments with patients hoping to receive a dose of the vaccine.
Salomon assured Tuesday that general practitioners would be able to order 800,000 new doses, doubling the amount already available to them. Véran said of the 1.6 million total doses, only 400,000 had been recuperated from the pharmacies from which they had been ordered.
Since late February, doctors have been able to prescribe and administer the AstraZeneca vaccine to patients aged 50 to 64 if they were considered at risk. Vulnerable persons aged 65 to 74 were added to the remit of doctors in early March.
Difficult campaign
France’s vaccine campaign has been fraught by numerous delays, from a slow start in late December to shortages of doses supplied by AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna in February.
Earmarked for health care workers, the AstraZeneca vaccine has faced an uphill battle in terms of doubts over side effects and effectiveness. As of 4 march, only a third of health care workers had been vaccinated, prompting calls for mandatory jabs for care providers.
The overall campaign sped up at the weekend with some 585,000 people vaccinated, according to the government.
As of Monday evening, official figures showed just under 3.9 million people had received at least an initial dose of a vaccine, with 1.9 million or nearly 3 percent of the population receiving the second dose.
The current government plan is to reach 2 million doses per week and for 10 million people to be vaccinated by mid-April, 20 million by mid-May, 30 million by the end of June and anyone who wants one by the start of September.
(with newswires)
