French dentists and vets ‘should be allowed’ to give Covid shots

France’s main health body wants more professionsals to administer the vaccine as rollout gathers pace

A pharmacist prepares a dose of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine with a syringe in a pharmacy in Nantes (AFP via Getty Images)

French dentists and vets should be allowed to administer COVID-19 vaccination injections, health officials have said.

The Haute Autorite de Sante (HAS) said that the supply of Covid doses will increase next month and that the health ministry had asked it to recommend how to bring more health staff into the vaccination campaign urgently.

France is far behind a number of other European countries, such as the UK, in its vaccine rollout with 11 per cent of the French population having received at least one dose of the vaccine, and just over four per cent having been fully vaccinated.

“The growing supply of doses will allow vaccination at a larger scale from April and will require the mobilisation of a greater number of competent professionals to quickly vaccinate the relevant people,” the HAS said.

The health body added that dentists and pharmacists should be authorised to give shots in vaccination centres as well as in their own surgeries.

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They also said that medical students, lab technicians, veterinarians and certain other health professionals should also be authorised to administer the vaccines.

Widening roles in this way would add about 250,000 medical staff to the vaccination drive, health officials said.

France’s main challenge has been the supply of doses, not the availability of medical staff. But the government has said it expects a major boost in vaccine supplies from April.

About 7.1 million people have been vaccinated so far. The government aims to vaccinate 10 million people by mid-April, 20 million by mid-May and 30 million by the summer.

It comes as Emmanuel Macron has defended not putting the country into a third Covid lockdown.

He said: “We were right not to implement a lockdown in France at the end of January because we didn’t have the explosion of cases that every model predicted.

“There won’t be a mea culpa from me. I don’t have remorse and won’t acknowledge failure.”

Additional reporting by Reuters