Since Tuesday, November 1, Italian caregivers not vaccinated against Covid-19 are again authorized to perform their duties. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has announced that doctors and nurses suspended for almost a year for refusing to be vaccinated will be able to return to work.
In 2021, Italy was the first European country to oblige healthcare personnel in the public and private sectors to be vaccinated, under penalty of transfer to other functions or suspension without pay. The measure was to automatically end in December, but it was repealed a few weeks earlier to deal with a “shortage of medical and health personnel”, explained the Minister of Health Orazio Schillaci. And even if, according to the latter, the impact of the virus on hospitals is now “limited”, this reintegration measure would allow hospitals and clinics to recover nearly 4,000 staff, estimated Giorgia Meloni.
In France, a measure not really on the agenda
In France, which is one of the few countries where unvaccinated caregivers are still not reintegrated, the question is not really on the agenda. Since September 15, 2021, caregivers and non-caregivers who work in hospitals or in accommodation establishments for dependent elderly people (Ehpad) are indeed subject to an obligation to vaccinate against Covid-19. In case of refusal, they are suspended, without remuneration. This represents 0.4% of nursing staff according to François Braun, heard by the Senate in July. That is, according to the minister, a total of 12,000 individuals, caregivers and administrators combined.
Questioned on Wednesday, November 2, the government spokesperson, Olivier Véran, said that any development in this area was conditional on the opinion of the High Health Authority (HAS), as has been the case since the measure was taken. . contacted by log Releasethe HAS indicates that it has not received any new referral on this subject from the government, and that no work in this direction was on the agenda.
The last opinion of the High Authority for Health was issued in July 2022, following a referral from the Ministry of Health. The HAS then issued an opinion in favor of maintaining the vaccination obligation for caregivers. This indicated that “in the context of a 7th wave, given the effectiveness of the vaccines and the uncertainties concerning the continuation of the epidemic, the HAS considers that the data are not such as to call into question today. this vaccination obligation today.”
However, during a trip this Wednesday to the Necker hospital in Paris, the Minister of Health François Braun indicated that he would again seize the HAS on this question “in the coming days”. Even if “this will not make it possible to respond to the problem today”, he specified, in reference to the lack of caregivers faced by many health establishments, and for which he announced an envelope of nearly 400 million euros.
Despite several legislative proposals
Since the summer, in France, several legislative proposals emanating from the opposition have been tabled in favor of the reintegration of unvaccinated caregivers. In June, Senator LR from Haute-Savoie, Sylviane Noël, asked the government to reverse this measure, both for caregivers and for firefighters. “It is absolutely essential to abolish this vaccination obligation for caregivers as quickly as possible, to rehabilitate without wasting a minute these thousands of men and women unworthily treated by the French State and to finally grant them respect and recognition” , wrote the senator. But in mid-July, the Academy of Medicine expressed on the contrary its “firm opposition” to the reintegration of non-vaccinated personnel. She explained that if “any refusal to be vaccinated motivated by personal convictions is respectable”, it was “incompatible with the profession of caregiver”.
Three other new bills have since been tabled by Republican, UDI and National Rally deputies to reinstate unvaccinated caregivers. At the beginning of October, elected officials from rebellious France also went there of their own Law propositionbut “subject to the daily presentation of a valid negative screening test”.
Many European countries have already lifted this measure
Before Italy, other European countries took the decision to revoke their sanctions measures for unvaccinated personnel. This is the case of the United Kingdom, which, as of March 15, 2022, by government decision, canceled the “vaccination as a condition of deployment”, that is to say the obligation of the anti-covid vaccine to be affected in certain types of health services. Across the Channel, however, the sanctions had never really been implemented in the face of fierce resistance in the medical community, where nearly 8% of National Health Service staff had not received any dose of vaccine against Covid-19. last spring.
Similarly, very supported at the start, the Belgian government’s bill to sanction unvaccinated caregivers ended up falling through in view of the encouraging figures of the pandemic. It has thus been pending since July 2021, and no date of entry into force has been decided.
Across the Rhine, measures against unvaccinated personnel have also been relaxed in recent months. Until last March, employees of hospitals and retirement homes had to present a vaccination or recovery certificate to practice. He returns today to every land [équivalent des régions, NDLR] decide rules for unvaccinated caregivers. Suspensions are rare.