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HEALTH

Fact check: Can you get a Covid-19 vaccine without an appointment in France?

According to Health Minister Olivier Véran, you can simply walk a French vaccine centre and get your dose "within 10 minutes" - but is it right that you don't need an appointment?

Published: 2 July 2021 17:09 CEST
Fact check: Can you get a Covid-19 vaccine without an appointment in France?
People waiting for their appointments at a vaccination centre. Photo: Bertrand Guay | AFP

“You have 1,500 centres waiting for you, you can go without an appointment,” Véran said on Tuesday. “If you go there this morning and say, ‘I want to be vaccinated’, you have every chance of being vaccinated within 10 minutes or 15 minutes.”

A day earlier, he had tweeted a similar message, saying “Hesitation, wait-and-see, and fear of the vaccine are exposing all of us to the variants. Get vaccinated, with or without an appointment.”

However, it’s not every vaccine centre that operates a walk-in policy.

Generally speaking, anyone who wants to be vaccinated needs to make an appointment, which can be easily done online. The advice is to check whether a centre offers walk-in vaccinations before turning up unannounced. 

READ ALSO How to book an appointment for the Covid vaccine in France 

However it’s also true that this is in the process of changing and more and more sans rendez-vous (no appointment) vaccines centres are opening up.

There’s also a concerted effort to make vaccines easy to access, so sites are being set up in supermarkets, shopping malls or in smaller town centres when the market is on.

And if you’re watching the Tour de France, you will see a ‘vaccine truck’ following the route – a mobile vaccine centre that offers the jab to race spectators without the need for advance booking.

There are also centres set up targeting hard-to-reach or vulnerable groups, such as in homeless shelters, soup kitchens and charity outreach centres.

ALSO READ: What lies behind the slowing of vaccination rates in France?

Other temporary centres have opened up in recent weeks.

For example, football fans could be vaccinated in the Paris suburb of Poissy (Yvelines), while the round-of-16 match between France and Switzerland was taking place. Pity anyone getting their jab during the penalty shootout…

The CHU hospital at Limoges offered walk-in vaccinations for four days, while the Bordeaux-Lac Exhibition Centre offered a similar service on afternoons between June 24th and 27th – and the town of Colmar has offered a week of walk-in vaccinations.

A drive-through vaccination centre has opened for five afternoons a week across two weeks at the Aubrais train station (Loiret). It is hoped it will be able to inoculate 2,400 people a week. 

For now, such examples are the exception rather than the rule – but it seems they will become more common over the summer, as the push to maintain and improve vaccination rates continues.

ALSO READ: Does it matter if your French Covid vaccination certificate is in your maiden name?

“The development of walk-in slots is a national goal,” a spokesperson for the direction générale de la santé told Franceinfo – but added that it was ‘not yet possible’ to ‘draw up a consolidated assessment of the walk-in system.

Member comments

  1. Yes. I just walked into my chemist, asked if they had the Vaccine Janssen, they said yes and did I want it now. Twenty minutes I was driving home. It took longer to scan the code into my phone and set up the TousAntiCovid application

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HEALTH

Danish parties agree to raise abortion limit to 18 weeks

Denmark's government has struck a deal with four other parties to raise the point in a pregnancy from which a foetus can be aborted from 12 weeks to 18 weeks, in the first big change to Danish abortion law in 50 years.

Published: 3 May 2024 08:06 CEST
Danish parties agree to raise abortion limit to 18 weeks

The government struck the deal with the Socialist Left Party, the Red Green Alliance, the Social Liberal Party and the Alternative party, last week with the formal announcement made on Monday  

“In terms of health, there is no evidence for the current week limit, nor is there anything to suggest that there will be significantly more or later abortions by moving the week limit,” Sophie Løhde, Denmark’s Minister of the Interior and Health, said in a press release announcing the deal.

The move follows the recommendations of Denmark’s Ethics Council, which in September 2023 proposed raising the term limit, pointing out that Denmark had one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Western Europe. 

READ ALSO: 

Under the deal, the seven parties, together with the Liberal Alliance and the Conservatives, have also entered into an agreement to replace the five regional abortion bodies with a new national abortion board, which will be based in Aarhus. 

From July 1st, 2025, this new board will be able to grant permission for abortions after the 18th week of pregnancy if there are special considerations to take into account. 

The parties have also agreed to grant 15-17-year-olds the right to have an abortion without parental consent or permission from the abortion board.

Marie Bjerre, Denmark’s minister for Digitalization and Equality, said in the press release that this followed logically from the age of sexual consent, which is 15 years old in Denmark. 

“Choosing whether to have an abortion is a difficult situation, and I hope that young women would get the support of their parents. But if there is disagreement, it must ultimately be the young woman’s own decision whether she wants to be a mother,” she said. 

The bill will be tabled in parliament over the coming year with the changes then coming into force on June 1st, 2025.

The right to free abortion was introduced in Denmark in 1973. 

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