COVID MASK. For ten days, the mask has no longer been compulsory indoors, including in businesses and schools, but it still remains so in transport and establishments. However, faced with the rise in the number of cases, will the mask again become compulsory?
[Mis à jour le 24 mars 2022 à 14h13] For the past week, the number of daily Covid cases has risen above 100,000. This Wednesday, March 23, 145,560 positive cases were identified in France, which is a 50% increase compared to last Wednesday. Will the easing of measures in the face of Covid be short-lived?
The World Health Organization had, on March 22, considered too “brutal” the lifting of anti-Covid measures in several European countries, in particular France. Invited on the 7:45 p.m. set of M6 last night, Emmanuel Macron had defended this measure: “We all used the same strategy, it makes sense. Could we still ask our children to wear the mask? inside? No.” He nevertheless added that he would be ready to take responsibility if the situation became more serious: “We kept the mask in transport because we are packed, we even kept the mask on. sanitary pass in the hospital, we launched a recall campaign. If things were to go downhill, the president that I am would take responsibility to protect.”
If wearing a mask is no longer compulsory, it continues to be “recommended” by the Ministry of Health, in particular for positive people, contact cases at risk, symptomatic people and health professionals. For all the others, keeping the mask on the nose is quite possible because, despite the lifting of the restriction, vigilance and barrier gestures remain in place in a context where a slight epidemic rebound is observed, probably due to the under -variant BA.2 which has become the majority in France. However, the government preferred to opt for a relaxation of the measures as soon as possible, in accordance with the words of Gabriel Attal when publishing the report of the Scientific Council of February 14: “We are faithful to our compass, which is not to impose one restriction too many, not one day too many.”
Impact of lifting the wearing of masks in Europe
But then, what about other countries? To assess the real impact of the end of mask wearing on daily contamination figures, we can refer to the situation of countries that have lifted restrictions before us, as proposed by West France. In Denmark, for example, a month and a half after the end of wearing the compulsory mask, the country has recorded 12,363 new contaminations with the coronavirus on average, according to the press agency. Reuters, faced with 23,4000 cases in the past three weeks, a sharp drop. Thus, no longer wearing the mask was not accompanied by an increase in contamination. This is also the case in Spain, where the lifting of the wearing of masks on February 10 did not lead to an epidemic resurgence: there were an average of 14,406 new daily cases in mid-March, which represents a stagnation . The number of deaths has also greatly decreased. But these favorable curves are not a generality. If we look at the situation in England for example, a country where the government has decided to “live with the virus” by lifting restrictions even in transport, the number of contaminations soared in early March, with 40,000 cases. recorded between March 5 and March 11, the equivalent of a jump of 56% in one week (with the number of deaths increasing by 17%). Similarly, in the Netherlands, where the wearing of masks was lifted at the end of February, there are 65,584 new contaminations on average, which represents an increase of 80% in one week, the highest in Europe. The results of the lifting of the wearing of the mask are therefore contrasting. It remains to be hoped that France will follow the downward curve in terms of contamination.
- Schools, holiday centers and leisure centres. Wearing a compulsory mask will no longer concern educational, educational and training establishments; holiday centres; leisure centers without accommodation for adult teachers and supervisors.
- In the enterprises
- Shops. Sales outlets, shopping centers and covered markets will no longer be affected by the wearing of compulsory masks.
- theaters
- theme parks
- concert halls
- festivals
- sports halls
- sports speakers
- game rooms
- libraries
- documentation centers
- cinemas
- bars
- restaurants
- fairs
- trade shows
- professional seminars if they take place outside the company and bring together more than 50 people;
- ski lifts in ski resorts
- access to tourist accommodation such as campsites or holiday clubs with a single check at the start of the stay.
If the mask can now be dropped in many places, it remains mandatory indoors in some areas of daily life:
- Transport. Trains, subways, buses, bus and ferry stations as well as airports.
- hospitals and health facilities
The mask is no longer a mandatory outdoor accessory since February 2 and the first wave of lifting of restrictions. It is no longer compulsory but it remains recommended and the government is appealing to the logic of the French to reconnect with the wearing of a mask in very busy places.
The fine in force in the event of non-compliance with the wearing of the compulsory mask should remain at 135 euros. “Failure to comply with this measure could be liable, as is the case in other places where wearing a mask is compulsory, in particular transport, to a 4th class fine” defined by a fixed fine of 135 euros , had specified the general directorate of health as soon as this measure was put in place last year. In case of recidivism, the amount can go up to 1500 euros.
Reactions to the end of the obligation to wear a mask
With the presidential election approaching, the easing of standards has both health and political aims. Everything is a question of timing, the lifting of the wearing of the mask and the suspension of the health pass being decided during the Health Defense Council of March 2, the day before the formalization of the candidacy of Emmanuel Macron in a letter to the French, and the measures applying from March 14, a little less than a month before the first round of the election. A strategy that some are indignant about, like Florian Philippot, of the Les Patriotes party, who responds to the announcement on Twitter with “it just smells like the electoral campaign!”, Before adding “If Macron passes in April , we will have the return of Vaccination pass in July!” or Jean-Frédéric Poisson, president of the Christian Democratic party “VIA, the voice of the people”, who considers this announcement “calculated according to the electoral calendar”, in a tweet on March 3.
Among epidemiologists, the reactions are varied. For Antoine Flahault, epidemiologist and director of the Institute of Global Health in Geneva, the end of the vaccination pass is consistent with the decline in contamination: “Today, if the government judges that this pass has come to the end of its action, we can understand that he decides to lift it”, he explains to 20 minutes (interview March 12). On the other hand, the end of the mask seems premature to him, especially in schools where the mask was a means of effectively protecting vulnerable children. “In the classes, children are particularly poorly vaccinated, those with comorbidities find themselves at high risk of being contaminated and of developing serious forms, he recalls. In the same way, Bruno Mégarbane, head of the intensive care unit of the Lariboisière hospital in Paris, believes that keeping the mask remains essential for the most fragile: “there is always a danger also in unvaccinated people and in vaccinated immunocompromised people”, he explained to France Info March 13. For others however, strategy or not, this announcement is very good news. In particular for those who pleaded for the end of the wearing of the mask, like the epidemiologist Alice Desbiolles who, in an interview granted to Doctissimo at the beginning of February, explained that the misdeeds of wearing masks, increasingly documented, impacted “the mental health of children which is deteriorating”, remarks confirmed by his colleague, the emergency doctor Gérald Kierzek in a tweet on February 7.