While many laboratories have revised their delivery targets upward, vaccination centers are refusing appointments and some are even postponed. Nevertheless, the country expects to get millions of doses in February.

Will France become ant with vaccine supplements? Although the country has stepped up its vaccination campaign in recent weeks, injecting several hundred thousand doses per week, the Directorate General of Health seems to manage its stock with great reluctance.

To date, it is actually 1.48 million doses that have been administered according to data from the Ministry of Health raised by the CovidTracker site. However, the dose stock received on 26 January was officially 2.65 million doses. This represents a total of 55% of the dose used.

Keeping the dose under the elbow makes sense. Pfizer / Bioentech and Modern vaccines require two injections every 21 or 28 days, depending on the laboratory. And unlike the United Kingdom, which has decided to extend the deadline, France wants to honor the vaccination schedule. Using all of the current stock may make it impossible to administer a second dose in the event of late delivery. As a reminder, France should administer 342,000 second doses this week, or 21 days before 21 January.

About 7 million doses available in February

It is being said that the country now has about 1.2 million doses of stock as labs continue to deliver. Modern, which revised its delivery downward (150,000 less than expected) should still deliver about 450,000 doses in February.

For its part, Pfizer, after reducing its number of deliveries last week (380,000 instead of 520,000), announced on Monday that its production site in Belgium was now operational and could resume its hovering pace. . The lab is expected to deliver more than 570,000 doses this week and a total of 2.5 million doses in February.

For its part, AstraZeneca, which planned to deliver only 31 million doses in Europe in the first quarter, has revised its objectives upward and will eventually deliver 40 million doses. France, which is entitled to 15% lots, will be entitled to 6 million doses by the end of March. First delivery will be this week. Overall, the country should reach the tune of 2.5 to 3 million doses by the end of February.

So if we deliver from the stored dose (1.2 million), Pfizer (2.5 million), Modern (450,000) and AstraZeneca (2.5 to 3 million), we reach a total of 6, 6 to 7.1 million doses of vaccines.

However, the Ministry of Health injects only one million vaccines and 1.4 million second injections in February, totaling 2.4 million injections a month. It represents 36% of the country’s shares in February.

Locally, it is also very difficult to make appointments at the vaccination center and many scheduled appointments get canceled. A new break on the vaccination campaign that creates annoyance and incompleteness. After ramping up from mid-January, the campaign came to a halt last week. And the current objectives of the Ministry of Health do not suggest rapid take-off.

Contacted by BFM, the Directorate General of Health did not comment.