France takes another pop at Britain’s vaccine strategy

The number of Brits who have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine hit 9.2million yesterday. But not everyone is impressed at the pace of the rollout. Step forward, France’s Europe minister, Clément Beaune, who has followed the example set by his boss Emmanuel Macron in criticising the British approach.

The UK has taken ‘a lot of risks’ in its vaccine programme, Beaune told reporters: 

‘The British are in an extremely difficult health situation. They are taking many risks in this vaccination campaign. And I can understand it, but they are taking many risks. They have spaced – and the scientists have told us not to – they have massively spaced the two injections apart…They mainly depend on one vaccine, AstraZeneca.

‘The UK has used the vaccine in this age group (aged 65 plus). So I understand that if they are in a difficult health situation, they take additional risks, but I do not think our citizens would accept if we took all those risks despite the recommendations of our scientists.