The end of the vaccination obligation for caregivers, as recommended by the High Authority for Health and which the government will follow, is a disappointment, and looks like a renunciation, confides Friday March 31 on franceinfo Professor Yves Buisson, epidemiologist and president of the Covid cell at the National Academy of Medicine.
>> Vaccination obligation for caregivers: Lifting the obligation does not mean the end of the epidemic, warns the president of the French Hospital Federation
For Yves Buisson, this decision sends bad messages: on the one hand, a message indicating that the epidemic is coming to an end, which is false, he specifies, adding that we are even, on the contrary, in a phase rebound. The epidemiologist also believes that the lifting of the obligation implies that vaccines are of no use, which is false. And then the third message, which is perhaps the most regrettable, he adds, is that caregivers can choose what is good and what is not good for them in order to protect the patients whose they have charge.
Passage to an endemic phase
The nursing profession is not a profession like the others, explains Yves Buisson. It is a commitment to care for people, to protect them and therefore to respect the measures that go in the direction of their protection. He believes that the honor of the profession is neglected for a minority of people who opposed, for non-scientific but political reasons, compulsory vaccination.
The epidemiologist also expects an exit from the epidemic phase of the virus to enter an endemic phase where the virus will continue to rage each year with probably winter upsurges, like the flu. For this reason, compulsory vaccination is all the more necessary, believes the specialist, since the Academy of Medicine recommends annual Covid + flu vaccination. However, only 22 to 25% of caregivers currently follow the vaccination recommendation against the flu, a rate too low, according to him, for effective prevention.
