Fewer than 50 percent of French wish Covid vaccine
Just four in 10 people in France want a vaccination against Covid-19, a poll showed on Tuesday, just as concern also grows above the slow commence to the country's immunization campaign.
In line with the poll simply by Ipsos Global Advisor in partnership with the World Economical Forum, just 40 % of the French prefer to take on the vaccine.
This puts it behind even other laggards like Russia on 43 % and South Africa on 53 per cent, let alone those countries where eagerness to take the vaccine is high such as for example China on 80 per cent and Britain on 77 %.
Fear of side effects is the factor frequently given for not wanting the vaccine, according to the poll.
In america, in which a mass vaccination campaign has begun in earnest, 69 % of people now want the vaccine, a growth on October.
France started out its vaccination marketing campaign on Sunday along with almost all of all of those other EU, targeting residents found in care homes first.
However, less than 100 people had been immunized in the primary three times in France, a considerably slower pace than in neighboring Germany, aside from in the US or UK.
Rebuffing criticism on public media, a wellbeing ministry official said: "We've not set out to get a 100-metre sprint but a marathon."
"The beginning is cautious but we will stage it up and vaccinate on an extremely wide scale," the official said, noting that the authorities face a "quite strong scepticism for the French population."
The official said there is no problem with supplies, with 500,000 vaccine doses now set to reach in France weekly.
The Ipsos Global Advisor poll was completed in 15 countries online among more than 13,500 adults including some 1,000 in France.
Without let-up in infection costs in France, President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday chaired a gathering of top ministers and health officials to go over the crisis.
Some regional leaders possess pushed for at least local-level lockdowns to prevent the pass on of the virus but it is not yet clear what strategy the government will adopt after the New Year holidays. - AFP
