Vaccine rollout faces challenges in France's poorest region

SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) — Samia Dridi, who was born, raised and works as a nurse in Saint-Denis, fears for her impoverished town, recalling how the coronavirus cut an especially deadly path through the diverse area north of Paris, a burial place for French kings entombed in a majestic basilica.

Dridi and her sister accompanied their frail 92-year-old Algerian-born mother to a vaccination center for the first of two shots to protect against COVID-19 days after it opened last week for people over the age of 75.

While red tape, consent requirements and supply issues have slowed France's vaccination rollout nationwide, the Seine-Saint-Denis region faces special challenges in warding off the virus, and getting people vaccinated when their turn comes.

It is the poorest region in mainland France and had the highest rise in mortality in the country last spring, largely due to COVID-19. Up to 75 percent of the population are immigrants or have immigrant roots, and its residents speak some 130 different languages. Health care is below par, with two to three times fewer hospital beds than other regions and a higher rate of chronic illnesses. Many are essential workers in supermarkets, public sanitation and health care.

The coronavirus was initially widely seen as the great equalizer, infecting rich and poor. But studies have since shown that some people are more vulnerable than others, notably the elderly, those with other long-term illnesses and the poor, often living on the edges of mainstream society, like immigrants who don’t speak French.

Dridi, 56, a nurse for more than three decades, feels relieved there is currently “no significant evolution” of the virus in her town. But she doesn’t forget what happened when the pandemic first hit.

“We had entire families with COVID,” she said. Many have multiple...