Thread by @john_lichfield

New French vaccine thread…
The French programme is speeding up. Hooray. Without admitting they were ever slow, the French government says it can go faster. PM Jean Castex announced last night circa 1.5m extra injections this month – bringing the total to 4m. 1/16

The stats remain opaque but the extra jabs seem to involve a/ 500,000 new first shots for the over-75’s using Pfizer/Moderna doses and b/ 1,000,000 Astra-Zeneca shots which will be offered to health professional of all ages from tomorrow. 2/16

I have received a detailed reply from the health ministry to my questions on the pace of the French programme (which used just over half of the doses it had received at the end of Jan.). Libération newspaper carried a similar response. See below. 3/16
liberation.fr/checknews/la-f…

In sum, the ministry denies that it has an inordinate number of unused doses. It say it has a system of “flux tendu” (just-in-time) deliveries but no stocks as such. Doses are NOT held back for 2nd injections. However… to ensure smoothe supply, there ARE 3 buffer stocks. 4/16

These 3 stocks are a/ a central reservoir of doses for care homes; b/ the doses held in 100 distribution points for local vax centres; and c/ a “delta” of 279,000 doses in the process of being thawed. That explains why 1.2m doses (out of 2.6m) were still unused at end Jan. 5/16

OK. Fair enough. But that doesn’t sound very “just-in-time” to me. Italy is using 80% of its doses at any one time. Denmark claims 100%. However…The ministry says that it’s working on improvements to speed up and simplify this process. 6/16

Vaccine doses spent 6.6 days in the French pipeline in mid-January. They spent only 4 days by the end of the month. That will fall to 2.5 days by mid-Feb, the ministry tells me. That partly explains, I assume, why PM Castex said on Thurs that France could now go faster. 7/16

There will be 500,000 extra Pfizer/Moderna jab appointments this month which should lift them to 3,000,000 (1.4 m 2nd jabs/ and 1.5m first jabs). There will be 3m new Pfizer/Moderna doses. With 1.2m left from Jan, that implies 3m shots from 4.2m doses. Av 71%. Hooray 8/16

There is more…AstraZeneca jabs were, the health ministry says, never included in the reduced plan for only 2.4m jabs this month. The Feb target can be further enlarged now that the French meds agency has approved them (under 65’s only... for now). 9/16

France is therefore planning “more than 1,000,000” AZ first jabs this month, starting tomorrow. Health workers of all ages will come first, followed by 50-65 year olds with potentially Covid-hazardous health issues. 10/16

This should lift the total number of jabs of all kinds in Feb to 4,000,000 – exactly the initial target last year. However, France COULD (and may) do even better. It is expecting 2.5m AZ doses this month. Same question as before. Why then only plan 1m injections? 11/16

I would love to be able to take some of the credit for this acceleration of the programme. My thread last week was taken up in the French media, notably by BFMTV. However, I expect that I had nothing whatsoever to do with it. BFMTV maybe. 12/16

We are looking, I expect, at a rerun of what happened with Covid testing last year. A sluggish initial response by the mammoth French health bureaucracy eventually became ratherr fast and effective. The French vax programme should now begin to pick up speed. 13/16

President Macron promised on Wednesday that that all willing adults would be “offered the vaccine” by end August. Please note, however, he didn’t say “vaccinated with 2 jabs”, just “offered the vaccine.” 14/16

Many adults, we know, will refuse. The willingness of the French to roll up shirt sleeves is increasing but has reached only 56% (29,000,000 adults). Two jabs for all willing adults would require 58,000,000 injections or 276,000 a day. The present rate is less than 100,000 15/16

Hope remains. France’s vast network of local pharmacies will be allowed to jab people with the AZ vaccine from later this month. They say they can vaccinate up to 500,000 a day! If the supplies arrive and if the French govt allows normal pharmacy suppliers to deliver them.
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