Emmanuel Macron’s speech visibly motivated the French to be vaccinated: in less than 14 hours, 1.3 million citizens made their appointment on Doctolib. It must be said that by the fall of 2021, vaccinated people will have more facilities to access socio-cultural places and events than those who are not.
Emmanuel Macron’s firm announcements from July 12, 2021 in the evening, concerning the health pass, have obviously had a fairly strong effect on the French who are not yet vaccinated.
The French platform Doctolib, which allows you to make medical appointments, has seen a huge increase in the number of connections: ” There were 7.5 million connections in a few minutes ”, Reported Stanislas Niox-Chateau, CEO of Doctolib, during a press conference the following day, which Numerama attended.
Even more impressive: 926,000 people made an appointment to be vaccinated against Covid-19 the same evening of the announcements of the President of the Republic, and 350,000 people still the next morning. This means that in about 14 hours, 1.3 million French women and men have decided to be vaccinated. Obviously, a few citizens had probably made an appointment before the speech, but the number is anecdotal compared to the record attendance observed after 8 p.m. Many of them have also used the Vite Ma Dose site, developed by Guillaume Rozier and his teams.
Huge day yesterday on @ViteMaDose_off. More than 3.4 million searches for vaccination appointments have been carried out, 1.1 million appointments have been initiated on one of the 7 platforms.
– GRZ (@GuillaumeRozier) July 13, 2021
” It’s five times more than last week “, Noted Stanislas Niox-Chateau, who pointed out that Doctolib still knew, on the morning of July 13,” between 4,000 and 5,000 appointments per minute “. On the graph produced by the French platform and accessible online on the official website, we can see how high the bar corresponding to the appointments made on July 12 is compared to those of the previous days.
” We smashed the records: that’s twice the last record of May 11 », Confirmed the entrepreneur. The appointments that have been made are ” on average with 11 days delay “, He said, which means that the first doses will be injected in less than two weeks. On average, appointments for a second dose are taken within four weeks, which means that these French women and men will be fully vaccinated by the end of August.
In terms of age groups, two-thirds of citizens who made an appointment on July 12, 2021 are under 35 years old: there is even a big surge among those under 18, who represent 20% of the total. The over 60s, on the other hand, who are most at risk of developing severe forms of the disease, are only 3.5%.
How vaccination is becoming essential without being officially compulsory
This falls rather “well”, given that Emmanuel Macron announced that PCR tests would become paid from the fall in France. This decision is likely to greatly change the way in which the French consider the famous health pass, which will be mandatory to present in many socio-cultural places from this summer.
From July 21, the health pass will be requested in the following places from people over twelve years old:
- Amusement park
- Concert
- Festival
- Show
Early August, this document will be required in many other places:
- Cafes and restaurants
- Shopping centers
- Hospitals, retirement homes and medico-social establishments
- Planes, trains and coaches for long journeys.
It is true that a health pass does not have to be a vaccination certificate: it can also be a recent negative PCR test. But in fact, if the PCR tests become paying (as is already the case in other neighboring countries, which require to pay several tens of euros for each test), while the vaccination is free and less time-consuming, there will therefore be less and less interest in not being vaccinated in France.
