An XXL vaccination center opens at the Stade de France – Thibault Camus / AP / SIPA
- The Stade de France has been transformed into an XXL vaccination center against the coronavirus.
- If the vaccination rate is faster than expected, the center is struggling to find new candidates.
- The city of Saint-Denis and the departmental council are asking for an expansion of the target audiences to take into account the specificities of the department.
Has the Stade de France become a vaccination El Dorado? Throughout Monday and Tuesday until mid-afternoon, dozens of appointments were immediately accessible on Doctolib to receive a first injection of Pfizer. With just a few clicks, it was therefore possible to register in the morning to be vaccinated in the afternoon. The only requirement is to be part of the “target” populations, that is to say to be over 60 years of age or to have a co-morbid condition. “This is not a new phenomenon, we assure the departmental council of Seine-Saint-Denis. Every day we have slots that are not allocated and we postpone the doses to the next day. “
Frankly try to make the eligible inhabitants of 93 turn a lot of slots at the Stade de France still for today, from 9.15 am… pic.twitter.com/rE9iKs4udI
– GRZ (@GuillaumeRozier) April 27, 2021
But at the beginning of the week, impossible to do so because several bottles are about to expire: the doses must therefore find a taker – and quickly – so as not to be thrown away. Hence the addition of many slots at the start of the week. An addition that coincides with a programmed increase in the supply of appointments thanks to the additional doses allocated by the Regional Health Agency of Ile-de-France. When it opened on April 6, the authorities were counting on 10,000 vaccinations per week, half of which is reserved for the inhabitants of this department. Three weeks later, nearly 36,000 people received a dose of vaccine in this XXL center, specifies the Stade de France consortium. In the last week alone, 14,000 injections were given (about 11,000 in the first two weeks).
Expand the target audience?
If this increase in power does not pose a problem in terms of logistics – the center is sized to accommodate almost twice as many patients – candidates for vaccination are becoming increasingly rare. So much so that the department of Seine-Saint-Denis and the municipality of Saint-Denis are calling for an expansion of the target audiences to take account of geographic specificities. “Seine-Saint-Denis is the youngest department in France, we see very clearly a slowdown in demand, in particular because the eligible population is vaccinated,” says the departmental council. In this department, the youngest in France, more than 72% of over 75s and 56% of 70-74 year olds have actually received a dose of the precious serum, but the statistics are clearly down for the 60-69 year old category (21 %) who have had access to vaccines since mid-April.
However, the observation is there: the telephone platform reserved for the inhabitants of the department is less in demand than at the beginning of April. So that to fill in the “gaps”, people on the waiting list, “close to the target audience” but not part of it, are called back. Same observation on Doctolib: slots stay longer online. “Maybe it’s because new vaccine pods have been opened in the region or the nearby centers are receiving more doses that people travel less? “, One wonders within the department.
No wasted doses
One question remains: could doses be thrown away this week without having found a taker? No, the health sources and the department unanimously answer. If the Stade de France is not affiliated with Covidliste, the platform which connects centers with which there are still doses and volunteers, the remaining doses are allocated, each evening, to the volunteers who wait in front of the center, more close to target audiences to the most distant. There may just be more tonight.