On 2 September it sanctions the return to schools and workplaces after the success of the vaccination campaign driven by the introduction of the mandatory health pass
PARIS —La France faces the rentre – the return to schools (2 September) and to the workplace – on the strength of the success of the vaccination campaign. In his speech on July 12, President Emmanuel Macron announced the introduction of the health pass and established the principle that it is the unvaccinated who have to endure the hardships caused by the pandemic.
That could be remembered as the key moment in the fight against Covid-19 in France, and also of all Macron presidency: the health pass, which has become a green pass in Italy, has caused the no vax protests
and the anti-vaccination demonstrations on Saturday, a kind of extension of the weekly ritual of the yellow vests. But the pass has above all induced millions of people to get vaccinated, allowing France to catch up and face September with the infection under control.
Until January 2021, the French government was very slow in organizing the vaccination campaign, also because it took into account a certain traditional distrust of the French public opinion towards the vaccine. Every precaution was taken not to hurt the sensitivity of those who feared side effects, and at the beginning there was even a five-day space for reflection between the decision to vaccinate and the actual injection. After six months of hesitation, it was clear that one had to be given turning point and Macron changed his attitude by introducing the health pass.
According to epidemiologist Martin Blachier, Macron’s surgery in mid-July has saved thousands of lives. Without the health pass today we would be in a very difficult situation, worse than the one we experienced during the first wave. The epidemic continues, the President of the Scientific Council Jean-Franois Delfraissy says that we will see the light at the end of the tunnel perhaps in the course of 2022, not before, but the feeling that the possible devastation of the fourth wave has been avoided or at least contained. We could reach the peak in a few days – said the Minister of Health, Olivier Veran on Monday 23 August -. This means that we will have avoided the saturation of hospitals, and we can hope for a decrease in cases later on.
According to the projections of the Pasteur Institute, on 5 September France could see 443 new hospitalizations and 121 in intensive care, against 615 and 164 respectively on 21 August. This epidemic now affects only the unvaccinated, particularly in hospitals, says Gilles Pialoux, chief epidemiologist of the infectious disease service at Tenon hospital in Paris. The watershed speech on July 12 provoked protests, but also a notable vaccine rush, especially among young people. France, which was at the bottom of Europe at the beginning of the year, overtook the United Kingdom (by a little) share of people vaccinated with a first dose (47.8 million French), 71% of the total population, ahead of Italy (69%) and Germany (64%). The age group between 12 and 17 years only had access to the vaccine starting from June 15, but in a few weeks they were vaccinated at 58%.
The government wants insist on the vaccine, the only weapon available to fight the epidemic, and Prime Minister Jean Castex has announced the green light to the third dose for people over 65 and those suffering from comorbidities. The time lag with respect to the second dose must be at least six months. On 12 and 13 September, guests of nursing homes (called in France with the acronym Ehpad, tablissement d’hbergement pour personnes ges dpendantes) will be able to get vaccinated with a third dose, and from the first days of September others over 65 and people at risk will be able to make an appointment on the usual online platforms (the most used is Doctolib).
The French decision to resort to a third dose
he is not waiting for the favorable opinion of the World Health Organization, which, on the contrary, on 18 August last year seemed not very encouraging. Current data – said scientist Soumya Swaminathan – do not indicate that recalls are necessary. We still don’t know which groups of people and which vaccines need boosters. But the United States and Israel have also already decided to go ahead with the third dose, and this will soon be the case with Germany and the United Kingdom. A separate discussion, unfortunately, deserve the French Antilles (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthlmy), where the virus circulates much more than in metropolitan France, so much so that the government has decided to postpone the return to schools until 13 September.
As for the no vax, the protest dropped slightly last Saturday – 175,000 people against 214,000 in the previous week – but could increase again on Saturday 28 August. The demonstrations in Paris and throughout France are notable for membership and also for the violence of some participants. L’opposition to the health pass and the vaccine is often the pretext for a broader contestation by society and in particular by the government, and the slogans calling for the resignation of President Macron return. But if the clashes with the police and the fires of garbage on the boulevards make headlines, there are much more French who choose to get vaccinated – with peaks of over 700,000 in a day – than those who demonstrate against the health pass. In schools, which were almost always open during the past school year, the novelty will be the use – not mandatory and therefore not in all classes – of C02 indicators, a way to measure air quality and contain (opening more often windows) the transmission of the coronavirus by aerosol.
August 27, 2021 (change August 27, 2021 | 17:00)
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