They were waiting for this measure impatiently… This Thursday March 4, Jean Castex announced at a press brief, pharmacists are allowed to vaccinated people beteen 50 and 64 years of age suffering from comorbidities against Covid starting March 15, after reception of the next vaccine delivery. A decree is expected to be issued on Friday March 5.
This Thursday March 11, vaccination in pharmacies is taking shape. And for good reason, the Health Minister announced that over 18,000 pharmacies answered the call to take part in the vaccination campaign: "18,402 pharmacies ordered vials, scattered between 17,698 stores have ordered two vials, and 704 one vial, for a total of 36,100 vials", the ministry reported.
Back to February 1 already, government spokesman Gabriel Attal announced pharmacists will be allowed to administrate AstraZeneca Covid vaccine once approved by the Haute Autorité de Santé. “Of course, they will vaccinate, because we need them, because we have an extremely dense dispensary network throughout the territory” he explained on C à Vous TV show on France 5.
This measure has been made possible because of the vaccine’s storage conditions, much easier for this product than the other two vaccines currently available in France: “They couldn’t do it until now because we have Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines that required special storage […] that objectively make it very difficult for a pharmacist to do it in their dispensaries, which is not the case for AstraZeneca” the minister goes on.
Note deliveries are expected to dramatically increase, including 23 million doses expected to arrive in March-April, instead of 7 million back to January-February. For the record, over 3 million people have been given the first dose in France, and one million the second dose when necessary.
