The seasonal flu vaccination is « retard important » compared to last year, indicated Monday, November 21, 2022 the two main unions of pharmacists, who fear an epidemic “particularly intense” this winter.
The trend is not favourable: on November 18, 32 days following the launch of the flu vaccination campaignjust over 7 million doses had been distributed, compared to 8.6 million last year during the same time period.
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“It’s a bit of a disaster”
That is 18.3% less, according to data collected from 14,000 of the 20,000 French pharmacies and published by the company IQVIA, a specialist in health data, on its opendata platform (iqvia.opendatasoft.com).
“A very significant delay” for the Uspo pharmacists’ union, which “sounds the alarm on the drop in vaccination coverage”, judging in a press release this decline “particularly worrying”.
“It’s a bit of a disaster this year”, confirm toAFP Philippe Besset, president of the FSPF, the first trade union in the profession. Especially since this decline mainly concerns the public “priorities” (over 65, chronically ill, pregnant women), for whom the injection was reserved until November 15.
A difficult backlog
Pointing a “general fatigue towards vaccination, even among those for whom it is necessary”, Philippe Besset believes that he will be ” very difficult “ to make up for this « retard » without one “important communication campaign”.
But time is running out, because “the indicators of the arrival of the flu have started to light up in Brittany”, passed into the pre-epidemic phase at the beginning of November, underlined the Minister of Health, François Braun, on Sunday on RTLcalling the nascent epidemic a “virulent”.
The Uspo, for its part, reports a “higher flu activity” to other years, leaving “predict a premature and particularly intense epidemic” in a city.
François Braun nevertheless assured that the health system will be able to “support the arrival of the flu if everyone does their part (and) if the most vulnerable people get vaccinated ».
