This Monday, March 14, the health protocol is lightened in France, as Prime Minister Jean Castex announced on March 3. No more vaccination passes, or social distancing for those who wish. It is therefore in particular the end of the obligation of the mask indoors.
It’s almost a return to normal life, life before Covid-19. From this Monday, no more vaccination pass, no more gauge or distance in places welcoming the public and no more masks either indoors. The French will therefore be able to return to restaurants, cinemas, museums or discotheques without constraint.
And this is also the case at school where students and teachers will be able to drop the mask. As in business. No more plexiglass walls between the offices either and canteens which are functioning normally again, without a gauge.
Wearing a mask maintained in transport and retirement homes
However, sanitary measures are still mandatory in transport due to the proximity between travellers. As in health centers to protect fragile people: the mask and proof of vaccination or negative test are therefore always required. This includes hospitals, retirement homes and institutions for disabled adults.
” With Omicron we see that transmission occurs despite being vaccinated. On the other hand, the vaccination pass had the objective and objective that it fulfilled I think, of an increase in stimulation of vaccination and in particular of the third dose of vaccination, perhaps we have somewhat reached the limits of the widespread use of the vaccination pass in France and in Europe and that deciding not to impose it is something that can be fully explained and understood in the current situation “, details Antoine Flahaut, epidemiologist and director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva.
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The epidemiologist, on the other hand, believes that it is too early to lift all the measures and is worried about the end of wearing a mask in closed places. “ Wearing a mask is a measure that of course protects people who wear the mask but also protects others, including fragile people at risk of complications. Removing the wearing of the mask and the use of the wearing of the mask in a period of very high activity is to expose fragile people to these risks of serious forms “.
Macron expected at the turn
From a political point of view, the candidates for the presidential election judge the decision of Emmanuel Macron and his government with a mixture of mistrust and caution. They note that neither they nor their parliamentary representatives have once again been informed of the reasons which prompted the Head of State and the government to maintain the lifting of health measures, while the number of cases of Covid-19 traced back.
But no one for the moment takes the risk of frontally criticizing the choice of the executive. On the side of the Insoumis Jean-Luc Mélenchon for example, opposed from the start to the health and then vaccination pass, speaking out against its abolition would indeed make little sense. Above all, none of the candidates wants to be seen as a bad omen, while the lifting of the measures is widely seen as a relief by the French.
There remains an angle of attack: the quasi-concomitance between the new health rules and the entry into the campaign of Emmanuel Macron. For the environmental candidate Yannick Jadot, it would thus be both ” dramatic, scandalous and indecent that this is the electoral agenda [du président] who dictates the health organization of the country “.