French family doctors to give anti-Covid vaccines to speed up deployment

29,000 family physicians will join the effort to speed up the rollout of vaccination in France when they start vaccinating patients from Thursday.

Doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine are being delivered this week to nearly 30,000 family doctors, but stocks are still limited, each doctor will only receive ten doses of the vaccine.

“It is clear that the production capacity is increasing but for the moment we must be content with what we have,” said the president of the French Federation of Physicians, Jean-Paul Hamon to France Info radio.

Priority patients will be those aged 50 to 64 who have underlying health problems or are overweight, according to Jacques Battistoni of the French Union of Family Physicians. “These are the people most at risk of contracting a severe form of the disease,” he said on the radio.

Each vial contains ten doses which must be used within 6 hours.

Efficient ‘very quickly’
“Even after the first injection, the vaccine is effective very quickly, it offers 70% protection against severe forms of the disease,” explains Jean-Paul Hamon, “and after two doses, it is approximately 84% effective. It really is a vaccine that is very effective and will help us stop the spread of the disease. “

Hamon says there should be more communication around the AstraZeneca vaccine. He is concerned that statistics detailing the mild side effects have left some people uncomfortable receiving them.

“We should tell people that this is a good vaccine … that people should not hesitate to get the vaccine, and that just because one in five people has a fever for a day or two [after receiving the vaccine] that doesn’t mean it’s a bad vaccine – on the contrary.

So far, only 2% of the French population has received the two doses of an anti-Covid vaccine.

Weekend lockdown for Dunkirk?
Meanwhile, additional anti-Covid measures are to be introduced in and around the city of Dunkirk in the north of the country, amid a spike in infections.

Figures show that there are 901 cases of Covid per 100,000 inhabitants in the region.

The decision follows a meeting between the mayor of Dunkirk Patrice Vergiete and Prime Minister Jean Castex on Tuesday morning.

It is possible that the new measures include a weekend blockade, such as the one announced for Nice on the French Riviera, to start on Friday.