In France, every child is now obliged to have 11 vaccinations. If parents want their children to attend school, or take part in many extracurricular activities, they must accept. There is no opt-out or concessions made to vaccine doubters, reports The Guardian.
On Monday France’s government and health authorities are speeding up the country’s Covid-19 vaccine drive – a process complicated by widespread scepticism about the inoculation that has encompassed the usual global conspiracy theories.
For weeks, polls have suggested up to 60% of the French population do not wish to be vaccinated. As the government’s vaccine operation enters its third week, official figures show that as of Saturday at least 93,000 people had been given the jab – a much lower number than elsewhere in Europe, including the UK, Germany and Italy.
Laurent-Henri Vignaud, a science historian whose 2019 book Antivax, co-written with immunology specialist Françoise Salvadori, examines vaccine scepticism in the west since the 18th century, says we should not heed polls suggesting the French will refuse the vaccine.
“There’s a very big difference between what the French say and what they do,” he told The Guardian.
Read more of this report from The Guardian.
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