“By this evening”, the Maiia platform will have multiplied by five the number of meetings “compared to a typical day in this vaccination campaign”, estimated Wednesday, November 10 on franceinfo Matthieu Bécamel, communication director of the platform. It is one of the appointment booking platforms for the Covid-19 vaccination. A rise in power after the announcements of Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday. The Head of State announced that from December 15, those over 65 will have to have a third dose of vaccine to keep their health pass. The appointments are “at 99%” for reminders “for the month of November, to be vaccinated quickly”, specifies Matthieu Bécamel.
franceinfo: Have you noticed a Macron effect or a speech effect on the appointments made since last night?
Matthieu Bécamel: The answer is yes. It started before the weekend. And since Monday, we have roughly doubled the number of online appointments for vaccination. We had a speech effect. And by this evening, I think we will have done ‘an x5’ compared to a classic day in this vaccination campaign. Thousands of appointments have been systematically made since August, which was the month from which we had most of the French population who had had their two doses for the summer holidays. And we had a lot of reservations which were taken almost every time we had a speech and an opening of the sections to the population.
Does this craze last or do we observe slowdowns afterwards?
Indeed, we had a slowdown in August, after the July campaign when we opened to all age groups. And then, it stabilized after the summer, when we lived a month of September and October with a form of normality. And then, for a few days, given the announcement that was planned, the French remembered that at each speech, there were announcements of this type. This is what makes the French rush again.
In recent days, appointments are made more for reminders or for first injections?
What we can see is that a lot of reminders are taken, 99% for the month of November, to be vaccinated quickly and to be protected, in particular to have the pass that is valid from December 15. We are on something recurring now. So what you need to know is that the population over 65 is a population that has been very mobilized since the start of the campaign. And it is true that they did not wait for the speech to begin to mobilize to have their recall. We are entering a normalization, as for the flu vaccine where we are used to going every year for a booster. This is kind of what will happen now for Covid-19.