COVID-19. How Toulouse intends to tackle the gigantic vaccination campaign

This is the next step, and no less important, in the fight against the epidemic of COVID-19 : in Occitania, as in all of France, the authorities are betting a lot on the imminent arrival of one or more vaccines) to stem the pandemic. During his televised speech, Tuesday 24 November 2020, the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron sketched the contours of the “massive and rapid” vaccination campaign that “could begin late December or early January, for the most fragile people “.

TO Toulouse, communities are preparing to face it. Elected in charge of coordinating the actions of the Municipality and the metropolis against the epidemic, the professor Francois Chollet, he wants the Pink City to be ready for D-Day, and puts pressure on state services, whose “vaccine strategy” he questions. Details.

The municipality “asks the state to anticipate”

“We ask the state to position itself clearly on its vaccination strategy”, immediately anticipates François Chollet, who this week broke a letter addressed to the health authorities, and insists on the extent of the maneuver.

We will have to implement a digitally important device. Of the 760,000 inhabitants of the Metropolis, almost 250,000 would be considered at risk (over 65, or frail) and therefore a priority in granting the vaccine. We therefore ask the state to anticipate, because it is not a vaccination aimed at 3,000 people!

The head of state has excluding any mandatory characters campaign, but “even if only half of the people are vaccinated”, notes François Chollet, “there will already be many people … a mass vaccination operation, Coming soon “.

Three existing vaccination centers in Toulouse

François Chollet notes that Toulouse currently has “Three existing vaccination centers” : the first is at the service of infectious diseases at the Purpan Hospital, the second at the Joseph Ducuing Hospital in Saint-Cyprien and the third, which reports directly to the town hall, within the municipal hygiene and health service, in La Daurade .

If everyone is solicited for this campaign, for the chosen ones, we will have to think big: “It seems so city ​​doctors, in particular general practitioners, must be urged. We made the request to ARS and the idea is gaining ground ”, assures François Chollet, who also“ contacted the order of doctors ”for this purpose.

Covid centers, future ephemeral vaccination centers?

Another proposal from the elected representative, to ensure the success of the vaccination operation in Toulouse: a mutation of ” six Covid counseling centers current. They work well, even if the activity is moderate ”, acknowledges François Chollet.

The chosen one suggests leaving these sites open dedicated to coronavirus patients, and installed in cultural centers or other municipal public halls, and to make them ephemeral places of vaccination.

We are ready to see how to make them available for vaccination.

“We ask the state to anticipate a vaccination strategy”

“Our strategy is based on several vaccines,” Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday. Neurologist by profession, Professor François Chollet, let us remember, chaired Afssaps (ancestor of the National Medicines Safety Agency) for about ten years. He wants to be today optimistic about scientific progress in this regard: “The files that have been submitted have a chance of success. We are not far from the vaccine, or rather from vaccines, because the peculiarity of this epidemic is that there will be several. And there is a good chance they will arrive by the end of December ”.

Faced with this deadline, François Chollet asks the State and the ARS to measure “the extent of the number of people to be vaccinated, in a record period of time”. Especially since in addition to these flow constraints, communities will have to address other issues, such as conservation of vaccines. So it’s not going in four directions: ” We ask the state to anticipate a vaccination strategy on the territory of the metropolis of Toulouse “.