France’s Islandthe Paca region and the Hauts-de-France are going to experiment with the first vaccinations in pharmacies against monkey pox. In five pharmacies in these regions, pharmacists will be able to carry out the first injections from Wednesday, during this two-week experiment, said the Ministry of Health.
Faced with criticism from associations and elected representatives on the left about the slowness of the vaccination campaign, the Minister of Health, Francois Braun, declared last week that he was working on an experiment with pharmacists. To do this, a decree will be published in the Official Journal in the coming days, says the ministry.
To be more precise, two pharmacies in Île-de-France, two in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur and one in Hauts-de-France have been selected by regional health authorities, we add. This experiment will test the “organizational models between the pharmacies and the hospitals which receive the doses”, in order to decide whether it is relevant to extend the vaccination campaign to other pharmacies.
Very fragile vaccines
The smallpox vaccine used for vaccination against monkeypox must be kept at a very low temperature (-80 ° C) and “can only be kept for fifteen days” once thawed, explains the ministry.
The vaccines, although single dose, are packaged in boxes of twenty doses. “It will therefore be a question of evaluating whether there is no loss of doses”, specifies the ministry. He recalls that unlike the vaccination campaign against Covid-19, pharmacies this time will only be able to target a limited audience. Target audiences include men who have sex with men reporting multiple sex partners, trans people reporting multiple sex partners, sex workers and professionals working in places of sexual consumption. To date, 153 vaccination centers have been opened in the territory and 20,322 people have been vaccinated as of August 4.