even Before a vaccine becomes available, members of the scientific Council wished to propose a vaccination strategy for France.
If one or more vaccines proved their effectiveness, who should we propose as a priority ? In a notice dated 9 July, but made public only on Friday, members of the scientific Council, the committee on Care and the new Committee Vaccine Covid-19, wanted to bring the first elements of answer to this question. The option of a compulsory vaccination was rejected out of hand by these experts, just like an immunization, based on choice of “purely individual”, which could “not be effective and prove to be unjust socially.”
This discussion group has therefore drawn up a list of populations that should be targeted first, which represent a total of 30 million people. In the first place, and without any surprise, we found the 6.8 million French exposed as a result of their professional activity. With first professionals of health but also all staff working with older, in the long-term care FACILITY or at home, estimated to total 1.8 million people. In this first category would be over 5 million French in regular contact with the public (businessmen, office clerks, teachers, staff of the hotel, catering, cashiers, bus drivers) or who work in environments that are confined to risk (slaughterhouses, cruises, taxis…). And, finally, the migrant workers living in a home, where the clusters are regularly spotted.
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then the people at risk because of their age or their state of health. Nearly 13.5 million over 65 years of age, “subject a vaccine to be effective in this age group, which remains at this point a major question mark. To which must be added 4 million patients with a chronic disease (cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes), 10 million of them were obese, and most of the people with other comorbidities (respiratory diseases chronic, kidney disease, cancer, genetic disease affecting the immune system).
Convince the French vaccination
Finally, the 250,000 people in a precarious situation should also be one of the first to receive a vaccination. “The conditions of housing, the scarcity of resources or limited access to health information (…) expose them to a risk of contamination may be more important, and a higher risk of severe illness and deaths,” say the authors of the report.
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once these populations are identified as priority protected, the vaccination should address to the inhabitants of the overseas territories which have not yet been covered, the fact of a higher risk than in the mainland to see in these areas a shortage of beds in intensive care. And then the people living in the institution is closed (prisons, psychiatric hospitals, etc.), and finally the professionals with a strategic employment (police officers, firefighters, military). All the French involved, including those who have already been infected, could benefit from the vaccination. “There is no argument suggesting that this would be a problem, and on the contrary, it would be likely to extend or strengthen the acquired immunity”, are the experts.
The more difficult issue will be to convince the French to vaccinate. With the fear, in particular, that the recent controversies on the public strategies or pharmaceuticals do not refer to the vaccines, and harm to their deployment…