While 55% of caregivers working in nursing homes and long-term care units have received a first dose of vaccine in France, the government has just announced that it wanted at least 80% of caregivers to be vaccinated against Covid-19 by September. If the target is not reached, the Minister of Health has declared that he is considering the path of compulsory vaccination.
The government wants at least 80% of caregivers to be vaccinated by September
Today in France, nearly one in two people has received a first injection of a vaccine against Covid-19 and nearly a third has received both doses. On the side of nursing staff, 22% of private caregivers and 36.5% of staff working in hospitals have not received a vaccine injection. In nursing homes and long-term care units, only 55% of professionals have received at least one dose. Figures that the government considers too low and which push the authorities to consider compulsory vaccination of nursing staff.
The Minister of Health, Olivier Véran thus declared, this Tuesday, June 29, 2021, to want to accelerate the vaccination of the nursing staff: ” Our goal is that, by September, at least 80% of professionals in nursing homes and health establishments have received at least one dose. “. ” We gave the date of September, we give ourselves the summer so that everyone has had the time to make their choice and to be vaccinated. After which, if the vaccination is insufficient, we will move towards compulsory vaccination ” he added.
“The only way to get by and relegate the Covid to oblivion”
To justify his remarks, the Minister of Health recalled that a vaccination obligation is not new in the law since it already exists in certain settings. He gave the example of the hepatitis B vaccine by explaining: ” You cannot work in a hospital if you are not vaccinated against hepatitis B ” or : ” You cannot fly to Guyana if you are not vaccinated against yellow fever “. According to him, the obligation of caregivers to be vaccinated is ” the only way out and relegate the Covid to oblivion ” for “ protect the most fragile among us, those who, even vaccinated, remain at a low risk of dying or having a serious form “.
As for the Chairman of the Vaccine Strategy Steering Committee, Alain Fischer, he was also in favor of the compulsory vaccination of nursing staff by stressing the “ fundamental notion of exemplarity ”and by qualifying the refusal of vaccination as“ endangering others “.