The lifting of the vaccination obligation for caregivers is “a disappointment” for the Academy of Medicine, which denounces a “renunciation”

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: “A lifting of the obligation does not mean the end of the epidemic”, warns the president of the Hospital Federation of France

For Yves Buisson, this decision sends “bad posts” : on the one hand, a message indicating that the epidemic is coming to an end, “what is wrong”he says, adding “that we are even, on the contrary, in a rebound phase”. The epidemiologist also believes that the lifting of the obligation implies “that vaccines have 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 in their care.”

Passage to an endemic phase

“The profession of caregiver 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 estimates that “the honor of the profession” East “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 every 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 are currently following” the vaccination recommendation against the flu, a rate too low, according to him, for effective prevention.