RIBECOURT-LA-TOUR, France (Reuters) – Renaud Georges was just days away from receiving his first coronavirus vaccine, an injection he hoped would allow him to hug his grandchildren for the first time in months. He then received a text message informing him that the appointment was being canceled.
“It’s a massive disappointment,” he said. “For us, the vaccine is the only way out of this miserable crisis.”
The retired school teacher said that due to the scarcity of vaccine doses, the next available space was March 10th. His wife Annie, who turns two months old and is in good health, is not considered a priority, she does not know when she will do it. inoculate.
“We miss not being able to hug our children, hold them in our arms. That’s all for us, ”Georges said.
Europe faces a vaccine shortage because Pfizer and Moderna have temporarily slowed supplies, while AstraZeneca said it would reduce volumes allocated to the European Union during the first quarter due to production problems.
The shortage has led the American region of the Hauts-de-France where the Georges live, the large area of Paris and at least one other region, which accounted for a third of the French population, to postpone the distribution of the first doses.
General practitioner Anthony Haro said he was forced to temporarily close the vaccine center near Saint-Amand-les-Eaux, which had been in operation for nine days after the local hospital that supplied the vaccine said their stocks were exhausted.
“We had made promises to our patients, and those promises brought comfort,” he said. “We have very fragile patients right now, like those in chemotherapy, who can’t be vaccinated because the doses are reserved for second-round inoculations.”
“NO REMEMBRANCES”
France has not regretted the European process for acquiring vaccines, said European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune.
“The idea that France or Germany can get the vaccine but not its neighbor makes no sense,” the minister said.
Local officials blame the government for a chaotic deployment of vaccines. They say he panicked after the campaign started slowly and the vaccine became available to too many people too quickly.
Health Minister Olivier Veran said there had been no cancellations, only postponed appointments and blamed lower-than-expected supplies from pharmaceutical companies. He also said the increase in the number of vaccination centers had led to more appointments than doses in some places.
In mid-January, the 17th arrondissement mayor of Paris, Geoffroy Boulard, struggled to find doctors, nurses and administrative staff to run a third vaccination center in his district that could deliver at least 1,200 COVID shots a day.
Three days before the center opened, city officials informed Boulard that there were not enough doses of the Pfizer vaccine. “It makes us feel like we’re being taken for idiots,” he said.
Vaccine recruitment had been too opaque and the consequences were noticeable throughout France. The government of President Emmanuel Macron had ignored past lessons, he said.
“Advanced planning is not a French quality. We saw it with masks, test kits and we saw it again with vaccine doses, “he complained.” What was Plan B? “
Report by Pascal Rossignol in Ribecourt-la-Tour and Caroline Pailliez in Paris; Additional reports by Elizabeth Pineau; Written by Richard Lough; Edited by Janet Lawrence