As France’s bid to vaccinate 5- to 11-year-olds against Covid-19 hits the one-month mark, progress remains ploddingly slow, light years behind many EU neighbours. As the Omicron wave rages through France with average confirmed cases exceeding 300,000 a day, Prime Minister Jean Castex on Thursday euphemised that the jab campaign had begun “gently” and pledged to loosen the strict logistics holding it back. FRANCE 24 takes a look at France’s lagging effort to vaccinate kids and explores why.
Saturday marks one month since France began vaccinating its general population of 5- to 11-year-olds on December 22, a week after it allowed vulnerable kids access to Pfizer-BioNtech’s paediatric doses. Figures vary slightly depending on the official source, but uptake by all accounts has been anecdotal so far.
As of Wednesday, according to the Santé Publique France health authority, 1.8 percent of France’s population of some 5.8 million eligible 5- to 11-year-olds had received a first dose and 0.4 percent were completely vaccinated. The French health ministry’s figures puzzlingly are slightly better, with some 175,000 children, or 3 percent, having lifted a sleeve, it said Tuesday.
Many of France’s neighbours, meanwhile, are inoculating kids at pace. Twenty-six percent of Italy’s 3.6 million 5- to 11-year-olds have received a dose and 6.45 percent two doses. Spain had given one dose to 45 percent of its 3.4 million children by Tuesday; regionally, Galicia leads the way with more than 80 percent receiving the first jab. Portugal has vaccinated half of its more than 600,000 eligible youngsters. Even in more vaccine-sceptical Germany, more than 15 percent of the age group have received a dose and 6.5 percent both jabs. And in just 2.5 weeks since its push began, Ireland has vaccinated more than 10 percent of its 480,000 kids.
So why is France so far behind? It isn’t as if the country’s children have gone…
Source : france24
