SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) – Samia Dridi, who was born, raised and works as a nurse in Saint-Denis, is afraid of her poor city, remembering how the coronavirus cut a particularly deadly path through the diverse area north of Paris, a burial place for French kings buried in a majestic basilica.
Dridi and her sister accompanied their frail 92-year-old Algerian mother to a vaccination center during the first of two shootings to protect herself from COVID-19 days after it opened last week for people over 75 .
Although administrative procedures, consent requirements and supply problems have hampered the implementation of vaccination in France throughout the country, the Seine-Saint-Denis region faces special challenges to prevent the virus and vaccinate people when it is their turn.
It is the poorest region of mainland France and recorded the largest increase in mortality in the country last spring, largely due to COVID-19. Up to 75 percent of the population is immigrant or has immigrant roots, and its residents speak about 130 different languages. Health care is lower than parity, with two to three times fewer hospital beds than other regions and a higher rate of chronic disease. Many are essential workers in supermarkets, public sanitation and health care.
The coronavirus was initially widely seen as the great equalizer, infecting rich and poor. But studies have since shown that some people are more vulnerable than others, especially the elderly, people with other long-term illnesses, and the poor, who often live on the fringes of dominant society, such as immigrants who they do not speak French.
Dridi, 56, a nurse for more than three decades, is relieved that there is currently no “significant evolution” of the virus in her city. But don’t forget what happened when the pandemic first hit.
“We had whole families with COVID,” he said. Many have several generations living together in small apartments, which experts say is a common aggravating factor in the region.
Despite these bleak memories, local officials face special challenges in reporting vaccines to a population where many do not speak French, do not have access to regular medical care, and, like much of France, are wary of vaccine safety.
Next month, a bus will travel around the region, visiting mostly street markets, to provide information on vaccination. In addition, about 40 “vaccination ambassadors” who speak several languages must be trained to find out, from March, about vaccinations and the “fake news” that surrounds them.
An example is Youssef Zaoui, 32, an Algerian living in Saint-Denis.
“I heard that vaccination is very dangerous, more so than the virus,” said Zaoui, sitting in the shadow of the basilica. His proof that he doesn’t have to worry about the virus: the butcher on the road and the man selling cigarettes nearby. They were there in early March “and they are still here. … I’m still here, ”he said.
Is there any chance that the vaccine could end the inequality reflected in the region’s death statistics?
“Before the vaccine becomes a great equalizer, everyone needs to be vaccinated,” said Patrick Simon, who co-authored a study last June on the vulnerability of minorities in Seine-Saint-Denis to COVID-19. But he said the challenges of marginalized communities to access health care he continues, “so that these inequalities will also be reproduced for the vaccine.”
While the French health care system is designed to provide affordable medical treatment for everyone, bureaucratic demands and co-payments often scare new immigrants or the poor. Government health guidelines do not always reach people who are not part of the system.
As a nurse at a municipal health center, Dridi sees poverty as translating into vulnerability to coronavirus.
“I’m doing an injection, a shot, putting on a bandage … and some say,‘ I live in a car, I’m on the street, ’” he said.
This misfortune was not evident at the vaccination center where Dridi’s mother was shot, among 17 open across the region last week and where the luckiest in Saint-Denis, who live in private homes, were seen on a recent visit. Some went to the center with sticks or held by one arm. A couple showed up with a scooter. Everyone was eager to get vaccinated.
They were the lucky ones. Appointments were reduced after decreasing dose allocations for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, as elsewhere in France and Europe.
“I’m lucky to be vaccinated today,” said one woman, who then broke down in tears. She was infected with COVID-19 during treatment at a private clinic in April and lost her mother in October to the virus after contracting it at a hospital where she was treated after a fall.
The woman, who refused to give her name, told Dridi and her sister to take care of her mother because “it’s your treasure.”
For Dridi, watching COVID-19 people die can change the game.
“Some people say no (to get vaccinated) because they have no contact with death,” Dridi said. But death, “that’s what makes you react.”