‘Family stroll’ vaccine rollout puts Emmanuel Macron under the gun

French President Emmanuel Macron has come under renewed attacks for his country’s glacial rollout of the coronavirus vaccine.

French President Emmanuel Macron in Tours. Picture: AFP

French President Emmanuel Macron has come under renewed attacks for his country’s glacial rollout of the coronavirus vaccine.

Facing re-election for a second term, Mr Macron is staking considerable political capital on fulfilling a promise he made in a new year’s address to have a widespread and accelerated vaccine program.

But France is way behind other major European countries given access to the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine at the same time.

As of Wednesday, France had inoculated just 7000 people with their first jab, a stark contrast to the 316,962 in Germany. Even with a new-found urgency to cut back on red tape, France inoculated 5000 on Tuesday, compared with Germany’s 45,000 on the same day.

“This is the biggest fiasco we’ve ever had in the medical world. A logistical and communications fiasco, ” epidemiologist Martin Blachier told French television news channel LCI.

Community frustrations at leadership decisions is not confined to France. German Chancellor Angela Merkel faced strident criticism for transferring the control of Germany’s vaccination orders to the EU, creating delays as the virus begins to track upwards in the country. On Tuesday Germany recorded 11,897 new infections and 944 deaths associated with COVID-19.

Instead of exploiting the German-made BioNTech vaccine, Mrs Merkel allowed the EU to postpone its initial order because of the high cost and logistical requirements of its extremely cold storage. Bild newspaper has published a leaked letter where the German, French, Italian and Dutch health ministers agreed to hand over control of vaccine orders to the European Commission because Mrs Merkel wanted to convey solidarity as Germany began a six-month EU presidency.

The EU only ordered 200 million doses of the BioNTech vaccine in late October and has since increased the order by another 100 million, and is looking to buy another 300 million.

On Tuesday Mr Macron faced furious citizens while launching a child support scheme in Tours, amid claims French vaccinations were progressing at a glacial pace and presenting increased risks to the elderly. More than 65,000 people have died with the virus in France and about 25,000 coronavirus patients are in hospitals.

Mr Macron’s complaints to the Journal du Dimanche newspaper that the rollout resembled a “family stroll”, which was “not worthy of the moment nor of the French” has failed to placate the French, who are holding the President directly responsible for the delays.

French government spokesman Gabriel Attal said “a more gradual launch is necessary for logistical reasons: you cannot ask these people to go somewhere else in the country, and the delay is also linked to a pre-vaccination consultation and getting consent. This takes a bit more time.”

The problem lies in the country’s widespread scepticism about the safety of the vaccine, and the requirement that the elderly must visit a doctor five days before being inoculated to give their consent to receive the dose.

Earlier this week a consortium of 30 medical professionals including infectious disease specialist Karine Lacombe and the collective Du Cote de la Science published an open letter demanding generalised vaccination to all voluntary caregivers and to all people over 65, then quickly to the entire population “no matter the financial cost’’ and that French and European factories obtain licences from Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna to rapidly ramp up production.

Pfizer BioNTech is producing 500,000 doses for the French each week from its Belgian plant and once a new plant in Marburg, Germany, is operational in March, that will increase to 750,000 weekly doses.

France’s vaccination program involves inoculating 27 million people by the middle of the year after signing deals to buy 67.9 million doses from five different laboratories: 16.4 million from Pfizer/BionTech, 27.9 million from AstraZeneca, 6.9 million from Moderna, 8.3 million from Curevac and 8.4 million from Janssen.