Currently, less than a third of hospital caregivers have received at least one dose of the vaccine. An insufficient figure for the health and government authorities, who encourage them to be vaccinated more massively.
An “ethical duty” to “curb the spread of the epidemic”. This is the formula used by the seven orders of the health professions – doctors, dental surgeons, pharmacists, midwives, physiotherapists, podiatrists-podiatrists and nurses – to qualify the act of being vaccinated when one is a caregiver. .
In a column published today in the Journal du Dimanche, they “call with one voice on all caregivers to be vaccinated” against Covid-19. Indeed, the current vaccination figures for this profession – yet on the front line – are considered too low. “Only 40% of nursing home staff and 30% of caregivers in hospitals and city establishments have received at least one dose of the vaccine to date, estimate the authors of this forum. It is far too little”. According to them, it is all the more a citizen act as caregivers are “in contact with the most fragile populations” and “because it is part of their ethical duty to protect their patients in all circumstances, and because ‘it is imperative that they can protect themselves and their loved ones from the virus and curb the spread of the epidemic.’
A third of caregivers are vaccinated
For several weeks, the vaccination of caregivers has been debated, in particular about the doses of AstraZeneca. Last February on BFMTV, Jérôme Marty, doctor and president of the French Union for Free Medicine, called for “not vaccinating caregivers with this vaccine” because they “are subject to high viral loads, so they need the most vaccine effective. We are led to encounter the virus several times a day within the services. We must therefore benefit from the strongest protection in order to be with our patients”. And to continue: “we know that this vaccine (that of AstraZeneca) is less effective than that of Pfizer / BioNTech or Moderna.”
Currently, the figures for vaccination among caregivers are also insufficient for Alain Fischer, immunologist in charge of the government’s vaccination strategy. In an interview published in today’s Journal du Dimanche, he estimates that only a third of caregivers are vaccinated. “We must do everything to convince young caregivers who do not necessarily feel in danger themselves, that they protect themselves and that they probably protect their patients by getting vaccinated,” he insists.
Olivier Véran’s letter, poorly received by caregivers
Last Friday, the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, published a letter where he detailed these figures: “Today, nearly 40% of EHPAD staff and 30% of health establishment staff are vaccinated. This is an encouraging figure, but which is progressing too little. This is not enough, even though stocks of AstraZeneca vaccines are still available in most establishments. (…) If you are not yet vaccinated, do it quickly. It is about our collective security, and the ability of our health system to hold up.”
Many voices in the medical community have spoken out against this letter, like Thierry Amouroux, the spokesperson for the national nurses’ union, yesterday morning at the microphone of Europe 1: “the method of transforming caregivers into goats emissaries to hide their own incompetence to manage the epidemic and vaccination is quite despicable.(…)Caregivers do not refuse to be vaccinated!Caregivers do not want AstraZeneca, because it is not effective enough to a population such as caregivers. As they are very exposed, they need a more effective vaccine than AstraZeneca.” For the moment, in France, vaccination for caregivers as for other citizens is voluntary.
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