Paris region to suspend Covid-19 first dose vaccine jabs

COVID-19 - PARIS. The French public health agency for the Paris region has told regional hospitals they must suspend injections of the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine from Feb. 2 because of limited supplies, a person familiar with the discussions said.

The agency told the hospitals that injections of the second, follow-up dose would continue and that vaccines would be supplied for that purpose, the source said, but no first doses would be delivered to Paris region hospitals for now.

The ARS health agency for the Ile-de-France region told hospitals in a briefing that no first injections would be administered in hospitals from Tuesday because of "extremely tight vaccine supplies and the need to guarantee the second injection for people already vaccinated," the source said.

The Paris region public health agency and the health ministry could not immediately be reached for comment.

The ARS health agency for the Hauts-de-France region in northern France said earlier on Thursday that it was pushing back to the first week of March the injection of the first COVID-19 vaccine doses that had been planned for early February because of tight supplies of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

The move was aimed at ensuring that people who received the first dose of the vaccine in January would be able to receive the second dose.

Residents of care homes are unlikely to be affected by the change because most have already received the first dose, but the change is likely to affect people over 75 and health care workers who are currently due to receive their first dose.

The health ministry said on Wednesday that by Jan. 26 a total of 1.13 million first doses and 6,153 second doses had been administered.