During the session of the Departmental Council of Côte-d’Or on January 25, attention was focused on the vaccine policy. A wish was unanimously adopted “for total transparency of the State’s vaccination policy”. François Sauvadet announced that 26.6% of residents of EHPADs in Côte-d’Or have been vaccinated to date.
As mentioned in a first article on our site (to find by clicking here), the session of this Monday, January 25, 2021 was devoted to the extension of aid measures in the difficult context. Commitments that saw majority and opposition agree globally, in a tone and during rather consensual exchanges.
The majority and the opposition used a tone, let’s say more muscular, on a subject where, again, we agreed within the departmental assembly: the management of the crisis and in this case the vaccination strategy deployed in this case. beginning of the year.
“It’s incomprehensible”
For François Sauvadet, this is already regrettable, in the sense that the second phase of vaccination has been launched when 26.6% of residents of EHPADs in Côte-d’Or are vaccinated. This is too little according to the president of the Departmental Council, implicitly qualifying this policy as incoherent, which is more in a context of shortage of vaccines.
He underlines a double inconsistency: “It is Public Health France which directly manages, from Paris, the allocations of vaccines to the private and associative EHPADs of the Department. While for public EHPADs, it is the ARS (and it is therefore the CHU that supplies hospitals and public EHPADs). And I am not talking about vaccination centers, for which registration is suspended. It’s incomprehensible”.
Behind this, departmental elected officials see in it the mark of blatant recentralization. “I will not dwell on the way in which the government manages this unprecedented crisis but we can clearly see what recentralization is, we can clearly see the misdeeds of this one. And for having been for decentralization from its beginnings in 1981, I believe that more than ever, we elected officials, we must fight. We see that the municipalities and communities are at the heart of the problem and could manage it much better than what is being done today, ”noted Colette Popard, first representative of the departmental opposition as president of the Forces for Progress. .
On the same verse for once, the first vice-president of the Department, François-Xavier Dugourd, declared: “We see that our State is omnipotent but often impotent. He is bloated and behind that this crisis is experienced with a lot of lack of preparation, inorganization, inconsistency, even a breach of equality, with a lack of confidence in local actors, elected officials, intermediary bodies, ultimately a lack of of confidence in the French. And then a lack of knowledge of all the capacities for action that we can use to relay public action. All of this is very serious because these are lives that are not spared. In any case, it is certainly economic deaths that we will count in the months and years to come ”.
“The elected officials are annoyed”
On vaccine policy, Vice-President Ludovic Rochette tried to stop there despite unanswered questions: “I will try to speak as calmly as possible about this vaccination campaign. I would like to share my very strong annoyance, which I think all elected officials share, also shared by the populations. We received the prefectural decree for the opening of the three large centers and we succeeded in having a center covering the east of the department, but there is information that is missing: the distribution calculation for each center that we do not have. not happen to have. Today, fragile people cross the department by car to have their appointment. The situation is Kafkaesque. We must have as much transparency as possible so that we do not have this impression of injustice. And then what is the share of the population having completed their vaccination? What proportion of the population waits for the second dose? The elected officials are annoyed and the population is annoyed even more. It is really necessary that this vaccination, for it to be successful, be shared ”.
“We are consulted, we are informed and we use the pretext that we have been consulted. They continue to do what they want, ”then relaunched François Sauvadet, supporting his remarks in the direction of the Regional Health Agency:“ There is a form of arrogance from the Regional Health Agency which is sometimes insupportable. It’s move, there’s nothing to see. The prefect had to ask that we be provided with elements so that finally elements reach us, still partial ”.
The responsibilities of the government were pointed out by Christophe Avena, elected departmental in the opposition but also emergency doctor in Dijon: “The government is not responsible for the global pandemic, the government is not responsible for industrial production large numbers of vaccines. On the other hand, he has a duty in the responsibility and management of this crisis. There is no more mismanagement possible than the verticality of the management of a health crisis. Such a crisis must be managed as closely as possible to the patients and the people who benefit from this vaccination. The field actions of local elected representatives must be placed at the heart of this management. The mayors have demonstrated their ability to provide the necessary tools to answer this question. Let us entrust the management of this crisis to those who know, to those who know. This is essential. Announcing that we are able to vaccinate 70 million people and explain the next day that we do not have the vaccines, it is not good to do that ”.
For the elected departmental, there are today too many undisclosed parameters or in any case not enough shared or even delegated possibilities (home vaccination of people unable to travel?). A clarification of the situation is requested.
“The government must explain to us the reality of the confinement to come, it is inevitable. For political speech to regain importance, it must be respected and clear, ”added Christophe Avena.
“Everyone’s desire for this to succeed”
In this vaccination campaign, everyone must count, even more the actors in the field. It is in substance the message that has been hammered out in this way. “The inhabitants of my commune asked me to phone for them because they could not get information on how to get vaccinated. It is intolerable, ”noted Paul Robinat, mayor of the municipality of Drée with 63 inhabitants, wishing to reaffirm the importance of each municipality.
“I would like to thank all the caregivers and all the actors involved, because we can clearly see that there is a will of all for this to succeed, but for that we have to re-specify the vaccine objective, that we go as far as ‘after the first step before starting the second, the third and then the fourth, otherwise it is a source of total incomprehension. The vast majority of people want to be vaccinated but that we explain the instructions for use and that we ensure that everyone is served equitably in this vaccine offer of which this is the only outcome ”, launched François Sauvadet in as a conclusion to the discussions on the issue.
Charles Barrière expressed a wish “for total transparency in the State’s vaccination policy”. Hubert Brigand went there with a suggestion: “The next time the director of the ARS could not come and speak about these dysfunctions?”. A request to which François Sauvadet preferred to smile, doubting that it will be followed by a favorable response given the current context.
“I say it again: we are ready to support the services of the State”, insists in any case François Sauvadet.
Alix berthier
Photos: Alix Berthier
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