Thursday, the High Authority for Health issued an opinion recommending “lifting the obligation to vaccinate” caregivers against Covid-19. Health Minister François Braun said he would follow this advice.
“We are deeply disgusted, and it’s a collective feeling!”. General practitioner, president of the French Union for a free medicine, Jérôme Marty has multiplied the speeches to encourage vaccination, and justify his obligation in the hospital system, since the beginning of the health crisis opened by the Covid-19 early 2020.
So as much to say that the announcement made Thursday by the Minister of Health François Braun angers him. The latter indicated that he was going to side behind an opinion from the High Authority for Health (HAS) published the same day, changing vaccination for caregivers from compulsory to “strongly recommended”. Paving the way for the reintegration of non-vaccinated caregivers.
“We carried out the vaccination campaign (…). The government must not count on us to carry out the next campaigns, they will only have to do them with antivax!”, he says. from BFMTV.com.
“Pick a thorn out of one’s foot”
For 18 months, all caregivers working in France have had the obligation to be vaccinated against Covid-19, under penalty of being suspended. The vast majority, aware of the benefits brought by such an approach, doctors, nurses or even caregivers complied with the decision. According to some estimates, from 2000 to 4000 caregivers have been suspended for refusing to receive an injection, with however a more marked dynamic in the West Indies.
But for a few months, certain opposition parties, such as La France Insoumise or the National Rally, have been campaigning for the reinstatement of suspended caregivers. A decision on which the government still refused to go back, last December.
For Benjamin Davido, infectious disease specialist at the Raymond-Poincaré hospital in Garches, by taking this decision, the government wanted to “take a thorn out of its foot”. The specialist recalls that many caregivers have not received a reminder against Covid-19 since March 2022, and are therefore poorly protected against the disease.
Easier therefore to lift the vaccination obligation rather than to “set up a new compulsory recall campaign”.
“We give the stick to be beaten. I often have patients who ask me if I am vaccinated. By answering them ‘yes’, I can tell them that the vaccine is not dangerous, that it makes it possible to reduce 50% the risk of infection. With this lifting, there is a risk of credibility of the doctor, who is no longer on his pedestal of exemplary “, details Benjamin Davido.
Indicators on the rise
The announcement bothers the doctors interviewed all the more as it is made at a time when the indicators of the epidemic are on the rise again. During the week of March 13 to 19, Santé Publique France wrote in its bulletin that although at “low levels”, the incidence and positivity rates “continued to increase”, and this for the “second week in a row”.
Still according to Benjamin Davido, the reintegration of non-vaccinated caregivers, “it’s a puzzling message, because the virus risks circulating faster, stronger. We risk giving him fresh blood with young caregivers. And that is also accompanied by a relaxation of barrier gestures in the hospital”.
“We have a virus that continues to circulate. And who tells us that a new dangerous variant is not going to appear? It’s political reasoning”, sweeps Jérôme Marty.
A broader questioning of vaccination?
Apart from the vaccine against Covid-19, the HAS also expressed itself in the same opinion on the DTP vaccine, which targets diphtheria, tetanus and poliomyelitis, also recommending the end of its obligation. “If we continue in this dynamic, everything will collapse, the whole vaccination system”, fears Benjamin Davido.
“This message alerts me even more than the one on the Covid”, he continues.
An observation that shared on RMC this Friday Mathias Wargon, head of emergencies at the Delafontaine hospital center in Seine-Saint-Denis: “It is a message sent to antivax. We are a very antivax country, telling them that vaccination against the Covid, it is no longer mandatory, but also that against the DTP … It is a bad message sent“.
And this while the government intends to strengthen vaccination against the papillomavirus in colleges, as Emmanuel Macron announced last February.
“It’s a very bad message, the next vaccination campaign, they will manage on their own,” warned Mathias Wargon.
The fear of tensions in the services
Finally, doctors are worried about seeing tensions emerge in the services that will be reintegrated by non-vaccinated caregivers.
“This will create tension in the services, and above all, those who have lost their jobs, they are the most extreme! They will proselytize antivax!”, fumes Jérôme Marty, who wonders if “you want this be people who think the vaccine is for controlling people through 5G who are treating your grandparents.”
For Benjamin Davido, who counts 1% of the medico-social staff of his suspended establishment, “this will not strengthen the ties in the teams”.
“The teams did not miss them. They made the choice to withdraw at the height of the pandemic, and clearly, if tomorrow they come back, it is not sure that it will be seen with a good eye”, believes -he.
