Once again, the associations are stepping up. Objective: to accelerate the vaccination campaign against monkeypox, launched in July. A total of 2,673 confirmed cases have been identified in France as of Thursday August 11, reports the report from Public Health France published on Friday. In a press release posted on the same day, Act-Up Paris, AIDES, Sidaction and the sex workers’ union STRASS warned of the “real risk of an epidemic out of control”. According to their forecast, “at the current rate, all eligible people will be vaccinated at the end of December, and with a single dose.”
As of Wednesday, August 10, “more than 30,000 people” had received at least one injection against monkey pox (Monkeypox in English), according to the Minister of Health. Guest on RTL, François Braun revealed that “more than 2,000” people were vaccinated every day. While the target public is estimated at more than 250,000 individuals by the High Authority for Health – the figure includes the population of men who have sex with other men and have multiple partners – the slowness of the vaccination campaign is finger pointing. For Sandrine Rousseau, EELV deputy, the means deployed by the executive remain insufficient: “The target, in Paris alone, is 150,000 people to be vaccinated. The longer we delay, the less the epidemic is under control.”
Thursday, August 4, the Ministry of Health had aroused astonishment by extending the period between the two doses of vaccination against monkeypox, until then 28 days, for non-immunocompromised people. Having become one of the spokespersons for Monkeypox patients, Corentin Hennebert is regularly contacted by Internet users on social networks who complain of seeing their second appointment canceled, especially since the next ones are not fixed until September. or October. “You need a real vaccination schedule for it to work,” he explains to L’Express.
A lack of arms
Why does the government not sting with all its might? The hypothesis of an insufficient number of doses can already be ruled out. the Sunday newspaper indeed reveals, this Sunday, August 14, that the State has purchased 1.5 million doses from the Danish laboratory Bavarian Nordic. The weekly also reveals details on the objective set by the government: to immunize between 10,000 and 15,000 people per week.
If the number of bottles seems sufficient, the summer holidays could jam the machine. In question: the lack of arms to rotate the vaccination sites – 184 in number according to Ministry of Health website. In Ile-de-France, 31 opened their doors (half in hospital and the other half on an outpatient basis), including 19 in Paris. Depending on the number of cases identified within the territories, the means put in place by the departments vary. In Mayenne, the campaign will start on August 16, when a first case of monkey pox was confirmed by the Pays de la Loire Regional Health Agency at the beginning of the month.
Beyond logistics, some practitioners, like Professor Gilles Pialoux, head of the infectious and tropical diseases department at Tenon hospital, on France info, fear that precarious populations will find themselves excluded from the vaccination system. Blame it on the prevention campaigns which do not sufficiently target this public already far from health establishments. “We have to go to them”, comments Corentin Hennebert who welcomes, however, the prevention messages now displayed on dating applications.
In response, the executive ensures to prepare its capacities to inflate the number of vaccinations in a significant way “if ever this disease spread to the general population”. For their part, the associations are rolling out a plan of attack: to keep control of the epidemic, they are calling for the vaccination of all target people by September 23, i.e. within the next six weeks.
“Tracking” on the Covid-19 vaccination
To achieve such a result, they call for the deployment of experimentation by pharmacies. On August 9, five pharmacies were responsible for testing the vaccination in France, for two weeks, in Ile-de-France, in Hauts-de-France and in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur. “We have to go faster. In terms of logistics and experience, I think pharmacies are ready after the Covid-19 epidemic,” said Corentin Hennebert. Note that the logistical challenge is significant: the vaccine must be stored in boxes of 20 doses at -50 or -80°C, and remains valid for fourteen days when it is in the open air.
For this former Monkeypox patient, it is necessary to “model” on the vaccination campaign against the coronavirus. “Among the problems that go up, some vaccination appointments are not honored. Why not set up a system like Quickly my Dose?”, he wonders.
In order to give a boost to the campaign, the organizations are also asking for the mobilization of large organizations – such as the Red Cross – and the multiplication of large-scale initiatives. Saturday August 6, the city of Lille had organized an exceptional operation to be vaccinated without an appointment. “We must go faster in the fight against monkeypox”, indicated on August 3, the mayor of Lille Martine Aubry.
In addition to its slowness, the opacity of the vaccine machine is questioned. Three months after detecting the first case of monkeypox in France, the number of people vaccinated each day has still not been made public. “It is time to set up an OpenData (a public database, editor’s note) in order to transparently communicate the precise number of cases and vaccinees”, launched Guillaume Rozier, on August 10 on Twitter. A few days earlier, a group of 200 political figures, associations and citizens demanded in a column published on the website of the Huffington Post a commission of inquiry into the government’s strategy in the face of the Monkeypox epidemic. What to wonder if the lessons of the Covid-19 have been learned.