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HEALTH

France to open Covid vaccinations for 65-74 year-olds ‘by April’

Covid vaccines will be made available to the "forgotten" 65-74-year-old age group "by April", France's health minister said on Thursday.

Published: 25 February 2021 19:01 CET
France to open Covid vaccinations for 65-74 year-olds 'by April'
The vaccine programme will be extended. Photo: THomas Samson/AFP

At present over 75s are eligible for the vaccine at vaccine centres, while 50-64-year-olds who have underlying health conditions can be vaccinated by their GP, leading to accusations that the 65-74-year-olds have been forgotten in the vaccine rollout.

But France’s health minister Olivier Véran, speaking at the Thursday evening press conference where 20 départements of France were put on “heightened alert” for extra restrictions, said this age group would be offered the vaccine “between now and April, whatever happens”.

Previously this group had been scheduled to start getting the vaccine in March, although no firm date had been given.

The explanation for the apparent anomaly in age groups lies with the vaccine type.

The 50-64 age group from Thursday started to access the AstraZeneca vaccine via their GP, if they have underlying health conditions.

However this vaccine is not licenced in France for the over 65s, so this age group will have to go to vaccine centres, which offer the Pfizer BioNTech or Moderna vaccines.

At present only over 75s and those with serious health conditions are eligible for appointments at vaccine centres, and many of them have reported struggling to get appointments.

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HEALTH

France reports nearly 200 cholera cases in Mayotte

Nearly 200 cases of cholera have been reported on the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, which is struggling to contain the deadly epidemic.

Published: 21 June 2024 14:08 CEST
France reports nearly 200 cholera cases in Mayotte

“As of June 18th, 2024, 193 cases of cholera have been reported in Mayotte,” France’s Santé publique France health agency reported in its weekly update.

Of those, 172 were locally acquired cases, while 21 were in people infected in the neighbouring Comoros archipelago and countries on the African continent.

Cholera is an infectious disease typically causing severe diarrhoea, vomiting and muscle cramps. It spreads easily in unsanitary conditions.

Mayotte, which is home to around 320,000 people, reported its first locally acquired cases of cholera in late April, according to officials in Paris.

Two people have died since the beginning of the epidemic, one of them a three-year-old girl.

Santé publique France warned there was a particularly high risk of transmission in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, “as long as access to drinking water and sanitation is unsatisfactory”.

French authorities have been criticised for failing to secure access to drinking water to prevent a cholera epidemic in its overseas territory.

President Emmanuel Macron called for cholera to be ‘consigned to the past’ when he hosted a summit on Thursday on vaccine production in Africa.

Many parts of Africa have recently seen fatal outbreaks of cholera, which has highlighted the shortage of local vaccine production.

The Comoros, which has been affected by a cholera epidemic for the past four months, has recorded 134 deaths and more than 8,700 cases, according to a report published by local authorities this month.

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