It’s not too late to get vaccinated. France should experience the peak of the flu epidemic “within ten days”, according to the new Minister of Health and Access to Healthcare, Yannick Neuder.
And, while the number of cases intensifies week after week according to data from Public Health France, pharmacists have announced that they cannot meet expectations regarding vaccination.
At the end of the campaign, many of them no longer had the necessary doses, the fault of an order that was too low last year.
“According to estimates based on initial orders and sales data in pharmacies, more than one million doses are available in the city and in hospitals,” the General Directorate of Health (DGS) explains to BFMTV.
“Additional doses can be made available to the French market if necessary, thanks to the mobilization of actors in the sector,” indicate the health authorities.
“Improperly distributed” doses
In theory, pharmacies only have limited stocks of vaccines defined one year before the vaccination campaign, based on the number of doses administered during the last season. This can cause imbalances between well-tracked and less-tracked campaigns, sometimes leading to interruptions or waste.
According to the Union of Community Pharmacists’ Unions, at the beginning of the week there were still 400,000 doses in pharmacies, but they would be “poorly distributed” and half of the vaccine boxes would be stored in the hands of 10% of pharmacists.
But laboratories like Sanofi have announced that they will make new doses available. The French industrialist specified that these “additional doses” were “initially planned for other countries in the European Union.”
To avoid a new shortage next year, the Ministry of Health and the French Pharmacists Federation have asked pharmacies to order more doses for the 2025-2026 campaign.
Getting vaccinated against the flu does not guarantee that you will not develop the disease. It protects against severe forms of the disease, which are potentially fatal in at-risk populations.
Source: BFM TV
