Significantly more healthcare workers vaccinated in Luxembourg than in France

The affair of early vaccinations at the Hôpitaux Robert Schuman is still at the centre of national debate. However, in Luxembourg, unlike in its neighbouring country France, a majority of the nursing staff is already vaccinated. At least 68%, as was confirmed on Thursday by Paul Junck, president of the Federation of Luxembourg Hospitals (FHL) in an interview with RTL.

Even if there is still some reluctance among caregivers in the Grand Duchy, the situation is far better than in France, where only 30% of caregivers in hospitals and 41% in retirement homes are immunised. This low vaccination coverage recently prompted the seven associations of the health professions to issue a joint call to action, addressed to the entirety of France's nursing staff, urging them to get vaccinated against Covid-19 in order to slow the spread of the pandemic.

While Junck stated that he considered 68% "too low", he also added that he is certain this figure will increase. Vaccination rates will continue to rise in the coming weeks, and Luxembourg will reach "a much more satisfactory zone", according to the FHL president.

Approaching "91% vaccinated"

Junck stated that an additional 1,300 employees from the healthcare sector want to be vaccinated. These additional volunteers "will be included in the second vaccination phase" and will benefit from the government's decision to grant them a "second chance". Hospital and health care staff were - together with residents of nursing and retirement homes - the very first of the population categories to be able to receive vaccinations in Luxembourg from the end of February.

In addition to the 7,800 people in the hospital sector who were vaccinated at the end of the first phase, another 1,300 people are still to come. This means that 91% of the 10,000 employees in the sector in Luxembourg will be vaccinated at the end of the second phase of the national campaign. The latter started on 22 February; however, its end date is not yet known.

"Hospitals are continuing to raise awareness among their staff," says Sylvain Vitali, secretary general of the FHL, who attributes the new wave of converted healthcare workers to word of mouth and "the experience of people who were vaccinated four to five weeks ago". Another phenomenon contributing to the boost in enthusiasm is that "more and more scientific publications are enabling people to take the right decisions".

The situation in Luxembourg's major hospitals

The reasons behind the reluctance to get vaccinated of some care staff are varied. Some employees already went through a Covid-19 infection in the past, and thus simply think of a vaccination as unnecessary. Anja di Bartolomeo, who is in charge of communications at the Centre hospitalier du Nord (CHdN), believes that at the beginning of the campaign there were a lot of discussions, but in the end people decided to take action. She talks about a phenomenon called "autodynamics".

© BERTRAND GUAY / POOL / AFP

The CHdN has nearly 1,200 employees and has already vaccinated 961 people, including staff working for external service providers (security, cleaning, catering). "Nearly 70%" of hospital staff have already been vaccinated, di Bartolomeo says.

At the Centre hospitalier Emile Mayrisch (CHEM), 65% of the teams have been vaccinated so far. That is 1,431 employees out of the 2,200 who work daily in the hospital centre located in the south of the country.

At the Hôpitaux Robert Schuman (HRS), the internal vaccination campaign has so far enabled "more than 2,500 people" to be vaccinated. As a result, the vaccination rate is "over 75%".

The Centre hospitalier de Luxembourg (CHL) has yet to reveal its vaccination rate.

Mandatory vaccinations - still a possibility?

While "mass vaccination represents the main lever for action against Covid-19", the French National Academy of Medicine stated on Tuesday that "vaccine hesitation is ethically unacceptable among healthcare workers".

The Academy recommends making vaccination against Covid-19 compulsory "for all health professionals working in the public or private sector, in health establishments and in retirement and nursery homes, as well as for care assistants for the elderly."
An option that has been ruled out in Luxembourg until now, where vaccination remains a voluntary act. And for the time being, there is no question of changing tactics. "Everyone has their reasons", reminds Monique Putz, head of communications for the Ministry of Health.

Just before the national vaccination campaign began, Guy Castegnaro, a lawyer specialising in labour law, explained that in principle it is not possible to make vaccinations mandatory. Vaccination or forcing people to have a vaccination is an invasion of privacy but also an invasion of physical integrity, Castegnaro explained. The private sphere and physical integrity are protected. For vaccination to become compulsory in Luxembourg, a new law would have to be drafted. This would not be easy, as the European Convention on Human Rights has to be respected.