PARIS (Reuters) – The French government is to provide daily updates on the number of people it has vaccinated against COVID-19 as it comes under fire for its slow pace compared with other European countries.
Health Minister Olivier Veran told parliament on Tuesday his ministry would publish a detailed table with the number of people vaccinated per region by 1830 GMT at the latest each day.
A first list was published on Monday evening, showing that more than 138,000 people have been vaccinated to date, including more than 30,000 in the Paris region.
That number is well below the more than 1 million vaccine doses available in France, but Veran said the government would stick to its policy of prioritising the most vulnerable people, even if that means a slower pace, rather than opting for mass vaccination of all citizens.
For now, France is giving priority to residents of retirement homes, but early January it widened that to health staff older than 50 or with existing illnesses. From Jan. 18, the vaccine will be available to senior citizens older than 75 living at home.
Veran said the government was also drawing up plans to make vaccines available to people under 75 who suffer from certain illnesses – with a target of having a total of 1 million people vaccinated by the end of January.
“We cannot vaccinate the entire population in one go. Vaccines need to be produced and distributed first,” Veran said.
Veran said that last week, France had 1,080,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine in stock and was being supplied with 500,000 more doses per week, which will increase to 1 million per week.
On Monday, France had received the first 50,000 Moderna vaccine doses, which will be deployed in areas which face a strong resurgence of the epidemic.
France’s COVID-19 infections are on average increasing by more than 18,000 a day, a seven-week high, and the number of people hospitalised is rising again, data published on Monday showed.
France is one of the most vaccine-sceptic countries in the world, with a survey this month showing six in 10 French citizens would refuse vaccination.
(Reporting by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Alison Williams)
