Marie-France Boudret, who works in a French home for the elderly, watched a dying patient in front of her as Covid-19 had trapped her lungs. But when her employer offered a vaccine against the virus, the nurse delayed.
“I have a few doubts,” said Boudret, 48. “I’d rather wait.”
About half of health workers in French care homes do not want to be vaccinated, according to the group of experts who control the state’s vaccine distribution – compared to just 20% of residents who do not was included.
If large numbers of care home workers do not get the injection, they could pass the disease on residents who are not getting the vaccine and who are at high risk of serious illness, say older people’s advocates .
One reason for the complaint is that those who recommend the vaccine are the same people – the French state – who are being blamed by care home workers for their low pay and the difficult working situation, said Malika Belarbi, a care worker and trade union official.
“Total trust has been lost,” she said.
The case is not unique to France.
In Germany, a home care operator BeneVit Group surveyed workers in November and found that only 30% wanted the vaccine.
Peter Burri, head of ProSenectute, Switzerland’s largest advocacy group for the elderly, said most nursing staff in the medical department were willing to enter.
TAKING A JAB?
At a care home in Clamart, south of Paris, Monday, 66-year-old Marie-Dominique Chastel was playing a parlor game with residents. Chastel, an activity coordinator at home, declined the injection because she said her own immune system could fight Covid-19.
She said some relatives of residents had asked if she was going to get the vaccine. “My response was: ‘I’m going to wait a bit’,” she said.
Boudret, the nurse of the care home, remembered fighting in vain to save her patient in the first wave of the virus. On the same day two more of her patients died.
“That day, I broke down. It was the last straw,” she said. She said she felt neglected and undervalued by the state, citing short-lived workers and problems with equipment.
Since then, she has had a Covid-19. She was ill for a day or two, but is now fully recovered.
Workers at her care home, in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, were offered the vaccine.
Boudret said she was not in a high-risk group and felt there had not been time to properly evaluate the job.
Regulators around the world have reiterated that speed does not compromise safety and vaccine developers have said they would not cut corners in testing for safety and effectiveness.
The fastest results have come from doing parallel tests that are usually done in order and take years.
Tests for the images developed by Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson have only shown temporary side effects.
The French state drug safety watchdog has said that the procedure for approving the vaccines ensures that they are safe and that it monitors for side effects and has not seen anything. worth stopping to use.
The number of French care home workers declining the vaccine is half what it was in December, said Patrick Peretti-Watel, head of research at the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research.
But Peretti-Watel, who is also a member of the government’s vaccination strategy steering committee, said they needed to address the damage caused by disputes over pay and working conditions.
“It’s a question of winning trust,” he said.