Macron imposes a triple lock on Covid vaccines

When it comes to Covid booster jabs, the French are voting with their feet, or at any rate with their mobile phones. One hour after President Emmanuel Macron announced in a television address that all over-65s must be triple-jabbed by December 15 if they expected  their vaccination passes to emain valid, more than 100,000 applications were received on the leading medical site, Doctolib. 

Since then, large numbers of pensioners have queued up at pharmacies and doctors’ surgeries across the country looking for an early appointment. In my own case, I was told today that I should turn up at our local pharmacy on Saturday morning, when I and others from our village and its surrounding canton, will be offered a dose of Moderna sans rendezvous. 

And it doesn’t stop there. Those aged between 50 and 64 will be eligible for booster shots from December 1, meaning that my wife will also benefit. 

Macron is serious about Covid. He got off to a bad start in the early weeks of the pandemic, appearing to believe that the Coronavirus was no more than an inconvenience. Subsequently, when he realised his mistake, he compounded his error by rubbishing the AstraZeneca vaccine as, in effect, too little, too early – a judgement he soon came to regret. 

But in the two years since, the President has emerged as the most consistently hardline European leader when it comes to forcing the pace of vaccinations. As a result, France is steadily moving ahead of the UK in the overall vaccination stakes and is now upping the ante by making booster jabs a national priority. 

In his half-hour television address on Tuesday night, Macron urged the six million or so anti-vax holdouts in France to admit their mistake and to get vaccinated as soon as possible. Otherwise, he warned, they would be forbidden to board a train, visit bars and restaurants, go to the cinema or visit a nightclub, or, as he put it, to participate in “normal life”. 

At the same time, his education minister ordered that the wearing of masks is to be made compulsory again at junior schools, where the incidence of Covid has been rising in recent weeks. 

Covid in France is not going away. Transmissions have risen by 40 per cent in the last four weeks, leading to fears of a hard-hit winter to come. Up to lunchtime today (Wednesday), a total of 12,476 new cases had been notified over the previous 24 hours, along with 58 deaths. Since the pandemic began, some 7.32 million cases have been recorded and a little over 119,000 people have died. Hospitals are reporting a sharp rise in the number of Covid patients, and with the flu season about to get underway, the system is moving into a higher state of preparedness. 

(By way of comparison, in the UK over the same period, there were 32,785 new cases and 262 deaths, out of a total of 9.37 million cases and 142,000 fatalities.)  

Macron has been advised that France may be a little behind the curve and that it could catch up with Britain (and Germany) in the coming months if nothing is done.  Accordingly, he has used the power of his office to inform the citizenry what will happen, confident that in every one of the country’s 100 departments his wish is their command. 

Vaccine passports have been a surprise success in France. Libertarians spoke out against them in the early days, and there remain pockets of resistance in every area of life, not least the health sector. But street protests have diminished as the autumn has advanced and the reality is that most people now carry their passes as a matter of routine, just as they continue to wear masks in supermarkets and other public places. If Macron has been disparaged by some in the UK as a “little Napoleon,” he broadly accepts the charge, knowing that the constitution of the Fifth Republic allows for – and indeed requires – the President to sometimes don a Bonapartist mantle.   

Foreigners living in France, and those coming to visit, are subject to the same health requirements as citizens, which means that existing Covid passports, such as those issued in the UK, may in future not be regarded as sufficient for visitors to the country over the age of 65 who are only double-jabbed. Typically, the French take a hard line with outsiders, most obviously the British, and it is expected that from the New Year on it will be not so much a case of two jabs good, three jabs better as three jabs if you hope to get past customs and immigration. 

On a commercial note, France yesterday announced that its Valneva vaccine, developed in Nantes but with an important manufacturing base in Livingston, Scotland, had been given the official go-ahead by the European Medicines Agency and that 60 million doses had been ordered for distribution in the EU. The UK in the summer cancelled its order for 100 million doses of the French vaccine – which Valneva claims is “at least as good, if not better” than its AstraZeneca rival – in the belief that it would not be approved by the EMA.