‘Scandal!’ Fury in France at slow rollout of Covid-19 vaccine programme

Just 516 people had received a jab by Sunday, prompting a huge political row over why the rollout was so slow, reports Rory Mulholland in Paris

Virus Outbreak France

President Emmanuel Macron is under intense pressure to accelerate vaccine-sceptical France’s inoculation campaign, whose tortuously slow start has been denounced as a “fiasco” and “bureaucratic sabotage”.

Only a few thousand French people had received the Covid-19 vaccine by Monday, compared with 200,000 in Germany, after an EU-wide programme kicked off a week ago.

“This is the biggest fiasco we have ever seen in the health field,” said epidemiologist and public health expert Martin Blachier. “A logistics fiasco and a communication fiasco,” he told LCI news channel, adding that he suspected the government had caved in to the general practitioners’ lobby.

Until now, pensioners in care homes first had to see a local doctor who would explain the vaccine process and the patient’s necessary consent and then return days later to administer the injection.

That system has now been dropped, and people can get the jab upon the first visit.

But there is still widespread anger and incomprehension at why the process is moving at snail’s pace when death and infection rates in France remain stubbornly high.

The latest figures, from Sunday, showed that 116 people had died from the virus in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total death toll to 65,037.

Schools reopened on Monday after the holidays, but strict measures are still in place across the country, with bars, restaurants, cinemas and museums closed until further notice.

The government last weekend tightened its nationwide curfew in a swathe of regions in the east of the country, with stay-at-home orders now beginning at 6pm – two hours earlier than the rest of France.  

Macron, who last month himself recovered from Covid-19, had vowed there would be no “unjustifiable delays” in the rollout of the vaccination. But reports at the weekend said he was furious about the lack of significant progress.  

“I am at war in the morning, noon, evening and night,” the president has been telling everyone he speaks to, according to the Journal du Dimanche weekly.

“I expect the same commitment from all. This won't do. It must change quickly and firmly,” he reportedly said.

Macron was due to hold a meeting on Monday with prime minister Jean Castex to discuss how to speed up the vaccine rollout.  

Health minister Olivier Veran said on Monday during a visit to a Paris hospital, where doctors were being inoculated, that “several thousand people” had been vaccinated that day.

He did not give a precise figure nor say where the vaccinations had taken place, but the figure was certainly an improvement on the mere 516 that had got the jab in France by last weekend.

We vaccinated in a week the same number that the Germans vaccinated in 30 minutes. It's shameful

Jordan Bardella, National Rally

It was still unclear whether the minor acceleration would calm the political storm.

The far-right National Rally (RN) deputy president Jordan Bardella said France had become the “laughing stock of the world”.

“We vaccinated in a week the same number as the Germans vaccinated in 30 minutes. It’s shameful,” he told RTL television.

Guillaume Peltier, deputy leader of the right-wing opposition party Les Républicains, denounced what he called an “administrative sabotage of the health bureaucracy at the top of the state”.

“What we have seen is a government scandal. Things need to accelerate,” said Jean Rottner, the head of France's Grand Est region.

“The French need clarity and firm messages from a government that knows where it is going. It is not giving this impression,” he told France 2 television.

The suggestion that the government was not in control of the situation was fuelled by an illegal rave party in Brittany that went on for three days over the new year holiday.

Police were deployed in large numbers outside the warehouse where 2,500 revellers partied, defying orders to stay at home and avoid large gatherings - but failed to shut it down.  Some partygoers fought with police and set fire to one of their vans.

The inoculation rollout in France has been complicated by the fact that the country is one of the most vaccine-sceptical in the world.

An Ipsos Global Advisor poll published last week showed that just 40 per cent of French people are prepared to take the vaccine compared with 77 per cent of people in Britain.

The main reason French people cite in not wanting the jab is that they are afraid of possible side-effects.

The European Union has approved only the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. A version developed by the French firm Sanofi and Britain's GSK has been delayed but is due to be ready for use later this year.

The French government has denied it is moving so slowly in the hope that a domestic vaccine will soon be available.