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* France criticised for slow vaccine roll-out
* French regulator: more information needed on AstraZeneca
* https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/
(Recasts, adds details)
By Sudip Kar-Gupta and Richard Lough
PARIS, Jan 4 (Reuters) - France is accelerating its COVID-19
vaccination of medical staff in hospitals, its health minister
said on Monday, after an initial roll-out that was slowed by
bureaucracy and precaution in one of the most vaccine-sceptical
countries in the world.
Health Minister Olivier Veran said several thousand COVID-19
shots developed by Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech
had been administered across France on Monday.
France was slow off the mark, delivering just 516 COVID-19
inoculations during the first week of a campaign that focused on
nursing home residents.
"We have decided to accelerate the campaign by widening the
target group to health staff without waiting to complete the
vaccination campaign in retirement homes," Veran said during a
visit to a Paris hospital.
The sluggish start compared with European neighbours such as
Britain and Germany irritated President Emmanuel Macron, who has
called a meeting with his prime minister and health minister on
Monday evening to speed up deployment of the vaccine.
Macron wanted to "put pressure on the system" and quicken
the vaccine's deployment, an Elysee official said.
"It's going too slowly," epidemiologist and government
adviser Arnaud Fontanet told France Info radio.
"But the real deadline is to reach 5-10 million
(vaccinations) by the end of March, because that's the point at
which you have a real impact on the spread of the virus."
The coronavirus has killed more than 65,000 people in
France, the seventh-highest national toll globally. Even so, a
survey over the weekend showed six in every 10 French citizens
intend to refuse vaccination.
Fontanet said it would be "useful" to simplify the
bureaucracy involved in the vaccination roll-out. He stopped
short of saying whether a mandatory consultation with a doctor
several days before getting a COVID jab was time wasted.
CAUTIOUS APPROACH
A slow vaccination campaign risks jeopardising France's
recovery from an unprecedented economic slump in a time of
peace.
France's National Academy of Medicine last week said the
government was taking "excessive precautions". Government
officials have said vaccinating in care homes was complex
logistically.
A spokesman for nursing home operator Korian said that the
company had been told to be ready for vaccinations at three of
its sites in the greater Paris area on Monday but that the doses
had not yet been delivered.
Britain, which has used more than a million COVID-19 vaccine
shots already, has now begun vaccinating its population with the
shot developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca,
boasting a scientific triumph.
Dominique Le Guludec, head of France's medical regulator,
said there was still insufficient data to approve the
AstraZeneca vaccine.
"We prefer to wait another 15 days if necessary to have all
the data we need on safety and efficacy," Le Guludec told BFM
TV.
The EU's medical watchdog is expected to decide on approval
of a third vaccine, developed by Moderna, later this
week.
France on Monday sent 12 million pupils back to school after
the Christmas holidays as planned.
Restaurants, bars, museums and cinemas remain shut. It was
unlikely restaurants would re-open as initially planned on Jan.
20, government minister Alain Griset said on Sunday.
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Richard Lough; Additional
reporting by Michel Rose; Editing by Nick Macfie, Hugh Lawson,
William Maclean)
