Europe ramps up vaccinations as virus haunts Easter holidays
PARIS — The main stadium in the French city of Lyon opened as a mass vaccination centre during Easter weekend, and thousands of people spent the holiday lining up for injections elsewhere in France as the government tried to speed up shots amid a new rush of coronavirus cases.
But as Europe faced its second Easter in a row under the cloud of the pandemic, some French cities pushed back against President Emmanuel Macron’s insistence that “there are no weekends or days off during vaccination.”
Authorities in Strasbourg, on the German border shut down their vaccination facilities from Good Friday through Easter Monday — a public holiday in France — to allow workers “a little rest at last,” according to a city official. To ensure that residents still had access to potentially life-saving vaccines, the city expanded vaccination hours and administered all of its its weekly supply of doses between Monday and Thursday.
The city of Sarcelles north of Paris was among those where officials kept vaccine sites open Sunday amid mushrooming infections and demand.