France Link

France extends access to Covid jabs to holiday travellers

Amid a surge of infections of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, France now allows people to receive a second dose of Covid vaccine anywhere in the country in an effort to encourage holidaymakers not to delay the final jab until after the summer vacations.

La rédaction de Mediapart

This article is freely available.

French holidaymakers will have access to Covid vaccines wherever they are in the country this summer, reports The Guardian.

The move, introduced on Monday, follows a dropping-off in the number of first vaccine jabs and warnings of a fourth wave of coronavirus as the rate of Delta variant infections rises.

In France, people often take the entirety of July or August off work, and there have been reports of people postponing their coronavirus jabs due to previous rules that the second dose should be administered in the same place as the first.

Mobile vaccine units are being introduced in popular tourist spots, including beaches.

The health minister, Olivier Véran, had initially opposed loosening the second dose rules because of the difficulty of changing the distribution of vaccine stocks. He also suggested doctors and paramedics in certain holiday hotspots had “other things to do than vaccinate the entire French population during the summer”.

Read more of this report from The Guardian.