“The vaccination rate varies according to the level of diploma, the socio-professional category or the level of income”, summarizes a study by DREES.
This is one of the aspects on which the health authorities insist, hammering home the usefulness of “going towards” campaigns. According to a new survey published this Thursday by the DREES, the vaccination campaign against Covid-19 is marked by significant socio-economic disparities. People who are less well-off, less educated or belonging to certain socio-professional categories have less access to the vaccine and are less willing to be vaccinated against the disease, we read in this document, which notes “strong social disparities“.
Read alsoCovid-19: who are the 4.3 million French people still unvaccinated?
To reach this conclusion, the DREES, attached to the Ministry of Health, relies on the third wave of the EpiCov survey, carried out jointly with Inserm. This component was carried outsix months after the start of the vaccination campaign […]between June 24 and August 9, 2021“, while between 20.4 and 38 million French people were fully vaccinated. It concerned 85,032 people.
“The vaccination rate varies according to the level of diploma, the socio-professional category or the level of income“, sums up the Drees. Thus, if less than two-thirds of workers or former workers were vaccinated, this rate rose to 83% for managers or former managers. Similar gaps separate people according to their level of diploma: the BAC+5 are thus more vaccinated than those with a lower level of education. Even more strikingly, the gap between the lowest and highest standards of living even rises to “more than 30 points“. So many differences observed “regardless of age or health status“.
Significant differences also appear according to the origin of the individuals: people who are neither immigrants, nor descendants of immigrants, nor natives, nor descendants of DROMs are thus much more vaccinated (nearly 75%) than those natives or descendants of DROMs (56 .2%) or those descending from non-EU immigrants (52.5%). In addition, the DREES recalls that “immigrants from a country outside the European Union and their descendants were more often infected with the virus during the first two waves of the epidemic […] and people born abroad saw a higher increase in the number of deaths in 2020 than those born in France“.
SEE ALSO – “More claims against vaccination”: Jean Castex denounces the “freedom convoys”
A strong difference depending on whether or not you trust the government
Similarly, territorial inequalities appear, depending on whether or not you live in a priority area of urban policy, for example. In Overseas France, the same differences as in mainland France are observed overall, but more markedly: peopleless educated and those who perceive their financial situation as precarious“Get vaccinated less, notes the Drees.
The survey also highlights a political link between trust in institutions and adherence to the vaccination campaign: peoplechallenging the government to limit the spread of the virusare thus much less vaccinated, on the order of 24 percentage points, compared to those whoabsolutely» confidence in the authorities. An even larger gap separates individuals who do or do not trust scientists to fight the epidemic: only a third of those who do notnot at all“trust scientists are vaccinated, compared to 83% of those who do”absolutely” trust. In these two cases, the defiant people do not go to be vaccinated or prefer to wait.
Different elements of explanation
The differences in vaccination rates according to standard of living had already been noted in certain studies, including one dated last July, and carried out by Florence Débarre, CNRS researcher assigned to the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Sciences. from Paris. The Coviprev surveys conducted by Santé Publique France also revealed differences according to standard of living. The Ministry of Health underlined, in mid-November, that the vaccination rate of populations benefiting from complementary health solidarity (C2S) is “lower than in the general population“, of the order of 40% only. A symbol of thedifferences according to socio-economic criteriabetween household types.
However, socio-economic differences alone cannot explain the differences in adherence to the vaccination campaign. Also come into play the inequalities of access to information, the difficulties related to access to vaccination according to the place of residence, for example. These are all elements that must be kept in mind, in particular to define policies to move towards allowing the campaign to be pushed closer to individuals.