It urges. As of July 21, France had 1,567 cases of monkeypox according to Public Health France and on Sunday the World Health Organization raised its highest level of alert in an attempt to stem the spike in cases. So many indicators which worry and make “resurrect the trauma of the AIDS years”, insists in a press release this Monday the Inter-LGBT, which federates about sixty associations.
Faced with this disease, which mainly affects men who have sex with men and for which there is no cure, vaccination appears to be one of the essential solutions in the fight against the epidemic. The government that saw itself reproach its too slow action against the Covid in 2020does it do better in 2022 against monkeypox?
What is the government vaccination plan?
On July 7, the High Authority for Health recommended offering preventive vaccination to the groups most exposed to the virus. The Ministry of Health takes note of this and from Monday July 11, men who have sex with men, trans people, or even sex workers can make an appointment to receive a vaccine. In the aftermath, an interactive map French centers where it is possible to be vaccinated is published on the government website.
In a press release, the Ministry of Health indicates that the deployment of these centers is coordinated by the regional health agencies (ARS). He specifies that some are “already active” and that others “will open in the coming weeks, to cover the entire metropolitan and overseas territory”. On paper, the plan seems to work, but in reality, the situation on the ground is sometimes bogged down depending on the department.
Is it possible to make an appointment?
Two weeks ago, two readers assured us that it was impossible to make an appointment in Paris and Ile-de-France despite their multiple attempts to call and email. Today, the problem is not completely solved according to the association for the fight against HIV / AIDS Act Up-Paris which points to a very difficult appointment. “There are a number of slots available for vaccination which is largely insufficient, especially in rural areas”, he confides to us.
Same observation on the side of Inter-LGBT which denounces “insufficient vaccination places and unavailable slots on Doctolib”. To verify this, we called this Monday, a dozen vaccination centers in France. For some, the number invariably rings busy. In others, reservations sometimes opened late, such as at the Emile-Roux dispensary in Clermont-Ferrand, which has been offering “forty” slots per week since July 21 to meet “high demand”. But the problems with the vaccination plan don’t just affect appointment scheduling.
Are there enough doses?
In its press release, the Inter-LGBT assures that the deliveries of vaccine doses are “insufficient” and the supply circuits “disorganized”. At the Clermont-Ferrand center, we are told that “the current methods of delivering vaccines do not allow appointments to be scheduled beyond a week”. On condition of anonymity, two other vaccination centers explain to us that the doses of vaccines ordered “a week ago [ne sont] not yet arrived”. “It took a long time, but normally the vaccines arrive tomorrow, tells us one of them. But there is a big waiting list. »
On July 22, the office of the Ministry of Health claimed to have destocked 30,000 doses of vaccine. An “insufficient” number launches Act Up-Paris, given “the 300,000 people exposed who will have to have one to three injections”. Same opinion on the side of the City of Paris. According to health assistant (EELV) Anne Souyris, it would take ten times more to vaccinate preventively all people at risk in Ile-de-France.
On Monday, the European Commission approved the extension of the Bavarian Nordic pharmaceutical group’s vaccine against monkeypox. The announcement could imply that there will therefore be more vaccines, but that is not the case. Indeed, this smallpox already has the authorization to be administered in France since 2013. “This extension will be useful to other countries, but not to us”, underlines one in a Cegidd (Free center of information, screening and diagnosis), arguing that the manufacture of the vaccine by the Danish laboratory cannot go as fast as the production of a messenger RNA for example.
Can the centers meet the demand?
Once again, the French health system could be faced with its lack of resources. If in certain centers such as Alençon we are assured that “twenty appointments” for vaccines against monkeypox will be guaranteed, it could be more complicated elsewhere. “The number of caregivers who can vaccinate is not enough and the summer period does not help,” says Act Up-Paris. In addition, “all hospitals do not necessarily have pharmacies capable of storing the vaccine which needs to be kept at -80 degrees”, we are told in another Cegidd.
In Paris, the town hall called on Monday for “emergency measures” from the state to obtain more vaccinating personnel in the capital region, which has almost half of the confirmed cases in France. According to Anne Souyris, the recruitment of 13 full-time people could make it possible to inject 4,000 doses per week, compared to around 2,500 last week, Paris hospitals and municipal centers combined.
Where does the government still have a long way to go?
Inter-LGBT expects from the government “increased prevention, factual and non-judgmental, with exposed people, while too much delay has been taken by reluctance, letting the epidemic run”. Same request on the side of Act Up which requests that access to information be done “at the scale of the entire metropolitan and overseas territory, including in rural areas”.
The association for the fight against HIV / AIDS also demands the “liberalization of access to the vaccine” and asks, like Aides, to “give the possibility to pharmacies and private doctors to vaccinate” against monkeypox. “A social component must be designed to enable workers [et travailleuses] of the most precarious sex not to work when they are affected by the virus,” she adds.