A year and eight months after being suspended, unvaccinated carers are allowed to return to work on Monday, May 15. They are a few thousand in this case, at most, according to health authorities. This is the case of this speech therapist from Périgueux whom franceinfo met.
Unvaccinated caregivers will be able to return to work in the hospital on Monday May 15, more than a year and a half after their suspension. But hospital staff who had refused to be vaccinated against Covid in September 2021 will not necessarily be taken back to the same position and in the same department. How many will they be? That’s the question. The Ministry of Health had estimated at the time the number of health personnel, nursing homes, and hospital workers dismissed from their work at 15,000, but since then many have changed jobs. franceinfo met one of these unvaccinated caregivers who intends to return to work at the hospital.
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It has been more than 600 days since Adélaïde Jorand was suspended from her position as a speech therapist at Périgueux hospital. She had since clung to the idea that one day, without being vaccinated against Covid, she would return to work at the hospital. “I never doubted, she says. However, he had to hold on financially without a salary. “I had to empty my savings accounts. I live with my husband and my children, three teenagers, some of whom are going to higher education, so it was difficult.”
“Some of my colleagues have failed. They found themselves in a situation of over-indebtedness, personal bankruptcy. There were divorces, suicides … It was really not trivial.
Adélaïde Jorand, speech therapistat franceinfo
In hospitals, teams divided in the face of the vaccination obligation
During these 600 days, Adélaïde Jorand campaigned a lot against the vaccine and the health pass. She went on a hunger strike, created a newspaper, and even took part in a collective which ran for the legislative elections. In French hospitals, vaccination has divided the teams. We could hear vaccinated caregivers congratulating themselves on having “cleaned up by getting rid of antivax and conspirators.” However, Adélaïde Jorand is not afraid to find her colleagues. “I have no apprehension on the scale of human relationsshe says. The city in which I live is quite small, so it is easy to meet colleagues at the market, in a demonstration against the pension reform or at the bookstore… Contacts are very easy.”
How will those who are vaccinated react? Doctor Mathias Wargon, head of the emergency department at the Delafontaine hospital in Saint-Denis, especially regrets the symbol behind this government decision which calls into question, according to him, the principle of compulsory vaccination of caregivers. “France has already been an ‘antivax’ country for decades, so I fear that people will end up saying that vaccines are useless, he confides. Today, vaccines are used against infectious diseases, of course, but also increasingly against certain cancers… That’s all that we’re going to break.”
The various health authorities and hospitals estimate that, more than a year and a half after their suspension, at most a few hundred, a few thousand staff will ask to be reinstated in hospitals and nursing homes.