Faced with lagging vaccination against flu and Covid and before an end of the year ripe for epidemics, health authorities called on Thursday for “increased mobilization”.
“Given the winter period, the epidemic dynamics of respiratory viruses is likely to accelerate rapidly in the coming weeks and requires preparation”, especially before the end-of-year holidays, warn the Ministry of Health and Access to Care, Health Insurance and Public Health France in a press release.
The vaccination campaign against influenza and Covid, which began in mid-October and primarily targets those most at risk, caregivers and other populations in contact with vulnerable people, seems to have started more sluggishly than last year.
The number of doses of influenza vaccines delivered has thus fallen by 5%, with 8 million at this stage compared to 8.4 million at the same period in 2023, according to the Federation of Pharmaceutical Unions of France.
“We are catching up a little but we are having difficulty recovering from the bad start to the campaign,” commented its president Philippe Besset to AFP.
However, the flu epidemic is looming: indicators in community medicine as well as in hospitals continued to increase last week, according to the latest bulletin from Public Health France. Ile-de-France, Normandy, Hauts-de-France are in pre-epidemic.
On the Covid side, the situation is stable but may change.
Knowing that vaccines against flu or Covid take around 15 days to be effective, we must not wait “to be protected during the end-of-year holidays”, insist the authorities.
Stressing that “vaccination of the most vulnerable is the most effective way to prevent serious forms”, the Minister of Health Geneviève Darrieusecq, quoted in the press release, “strongly encouraged the 17.2 million people invited to be vaccinated to contact their pharmacist, nurse, doctor or midwife to carry out this simple and useful gesture for everyone.
Since last week, emails, voice messages or text messages have been sent to policyholders who have not yet been vaccinated.
At this stage, 4.5 million doses have been administered by pharmacists, an increase of 6% compared to the same period of 2023, according to the Federation of Pharmaceutical Unions of France.
A Health Insurance awareness campaign (“Don’t choose, get vaccinated against the flu AND against Covid-19”) will be rebroadcast in December.
