France to receive its first deliveries of Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine this week.

The head of the medical regulator says the government is under fire for being too slow with its vaccine rollout.

France, which has a strong anti-vaccination movement, started its inoculation campaign at the end of December, as did many other European countries.

France has only vaccinated hundreds since then, versus tens of thousands in Germany and more than a million in Britain, which on Monday became the first country to roll out the Oxford/AstraZeneca shot.

Head of the Haute Autorite De Sante (HAS) Dominique Le Guludec says

“I think that the Moderna vaccine ought to arrive this week,” adding that France wanted more information on the AstraZeneca shot.

Arnaud Fontanet epidemiologist and government scientific adviser says that France needed to speed up its vaccine rollout and that the spread of the virus in France was too high for the government to ease restrictions.

President Emmanuel Macron says in his New Year’s Eve speech that everyone in France should be able to get a COVID-19 vaccine if they wanted it.

The United States authorised Moderna’s vaccine on December 19, Canada did so on December 23 and the EU’s watchdog is expected to approve it this week.

France has the seventh-highest COVID-19 casualty toll in the world, with more than 65 000 deaths.

By Yazdaan Khan