Day: 5 January 2021

France is stepping up its vaccination programme after a ridiculously slow start that saw just 516 shots given in the first week of roll out.
The French Health Minister Olivier Veran has announced that the country will be accelerating its vaccination programme this week. Many medical staff in hospitals were inoculated on Monday and the Minister said “several thousand” shots had been given after criticisms of the nation’s slow start were made public, showing only 516 jabs in total were given during the initial roll out.
“We have decided to accelerate the campaign by widening the target group to health staff without waiting to complete the vaccination campaign in retirement homes,” Veran said during a visit to a Paris hospital on Monday.
The general consensus in the government is that the vaccination deployment has been far too slow, and it has been reported that President Emmanuel Macron has been annoyed by the lack of progress compared with other European countries.
The French programme, whilst not exactly Byzantine, does require a few hoops, including a mandatory consultation with a doctor several days before getting inoculated, something that may be a barrier to a faster roll out.
France has seen more than 65,000 Covid-related deaths since the start of the crisis, the seventh highest toll in the world. Despite that, it is estimated that 3/5 of the populace will decide against being vaccinated.
The vaccine scepticism of the French public may eventually cause a delay in economic recovery, as well as unnecessary deaths, but changing people’s minds is thought to be an uphill climb.
For the time being, only one vaccine has been approved for use in the EU and France, the one created by BioNTech and manufactured by pharma giant Pfizer, though there is word that the Moderna jab is expected to be approved later in the week.
 
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After weeks of waffling and contradictory information, Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced that the UK will be going into a national lockdown to try and stem the tide of Covid cases that are overrunning the country and overwhelming the health care system.
England was treated to a New Year announcement that the country will be going into a new lockdown, with non-essential shops and all schools to be closed effective immediately.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson held a public television address at 8pm UK time Monday night making the declaration and citing the new variant of the virus as the cause. The UK has seen an alarming number of new daily cases over the past several days, topping 50,000 per day and setting unwanted records.
“With most of the country already under extreme measures, it is clear we need to do more together to bring this new variant under control,” he said, adding that the weeks ahead “will be the hardest yet.”
The prime minister was characteristically fuzzy on details, not giving much in the way of specific dates and only near the end of his speech did he mention in passing that the measures would last at least until the half-term break in mid-February, with any relaxation of the rules not coming until 22^nd February at best.
It is a complete about-face from the stance of the previous day, where Johnson said that schools were perfectly safe to open in most places, even if tighter measures were needed in other areas, causing parents and teachers to give a collective sigh of exasperation.
Johnson tried to assure the Covid-fatigued populace that the vaccine is the way forward out of this situation, and that the country’s goal was to inoculate 12.2 million of the 13.9 people in the most vulnerable categories by the middle of February.
Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are also under lockdown, though they have their own sets of rules and timetables.
Experts warn the UK is heading toward 100,000 deaths by month’s end and caseloads three times what they were at the start of December.
“We are not confident that the NHS can handle a further sustained rise in cases and without further action, there is a material risk of the NHS in several areas being overwhelmed over the next 21 days,” the chief medical officers of the four nations said, while urging those who still need emergency care for other illnesses to seek treatment.