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LOUVRE

Coronavirus: Louvre museum in Paris reopens after staff walkout

The Louvre museum in Paris reopened on Wednesday after staff being closed for three days when staff went on strike citing fears over the coronavirus.

Published: 1 March 2020 16:42 CET
Updated: 4 March 2020 16:30 CET
Coronavirus: Louvre museum in Paris reopens after staff walkout
Visitors queue outside the Pyramid, the main entrance to the Louvre museum in Paris on March 4, 2020. AFP

The Louvre in Paris, the world's most visited museum, reopened after staff ended their coronavirus walkout.

Queues of visitors immediately formed outside the famous museum's entrance on Wednesday.

The museum had closed on Sunday when around 300 staff voted “almost unanimously” not to open, Christian Galani of the CGT labour union told AFP, leaving many would-be visitors disappointed.

It remained closed throughout Monday and Tuesday.

The Louvre, near the banks of the Seine river in central Paris, received 9.6 million visitors last year, most of them foreigners including Americans, Chinese and Europeans.

Louvre management later said it would refund ticket-holders.

“We apologise for any inconvenience and will keep you informed as the situation develops,” the museum said on its website.

On Saturday, the government announced several measures to try and curb the outbreak in France, including cancelling all gatherings of more than 5,000 people in confined spaces.

“The Louvre is a confined space which welcomes more than 5,000 people a day,” said Galani, adding: “there is real concern on the part of staff.”

Workers met in the morning to discuss these fears, and Galani said management representatives were unable to convince staff to go to work.

They demanded stepped up protective measures, including the provision of hand sanitising gel and window barriers to separate cashiers from members of the public.

In January, workers also forced a one-day closure in a strike over the government's pension reform plans. 

Earlier this week, the museum ended a special Leonardo da Vinci exhibition with an all-time visitors' record of nearly 1.1 million people.

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HEALTH

France’s Covid-19 app to be ‘put to sleep’

France's Covid-tracker app, used for months for the all-important 'health pass' will be switched off today, health officials have confirmed.

Published: 30 June 2023 13:29 CEST
France’s Covid-19 app to be 'put to sleep'

Covid-19 screening in France reaches an important milestone on Friday, June 30th, 2023 – when the TousAntiCovid app is officially ‘put to sleep’.

The app, which was launched in June 2020 as France came out of its first lockdown of the pandemic and has undergone a number of iterations, including as a delivery device for the health pass, will be switched off. 

For most people, this anniversary will pass without mention. Few people have consulted the app in recent months, and it has sat dormant on many smartphones since France’s Covid-19 health pass requirement was suspended in March 2022.

Meanwhile, the Système d’Informations de DEPistage (SI-DEP) interface – which has been informing people about their test results since the Spring of 2020 – is also being shut down on June 30th, as per legal requirements.

The SI-DEP shutdown means that it will also be impossible to retrieve Covid test certificates issued before June 30th, should the need arise. All data held by the database will be “destroyed”, officials have said.

It has handled more than 320 million antigen and PCR tests since it was introduced.

This does not mean that testing for Covid-19 has stopped, or is now unnecessary. As reported recently, more than 1,000 deaths a week in Europe are still caused by the virus.

The shutdown of the national information system does not mean that people in France cannot still book an appointment for an antigen test at a pharmacy, or a PCR test at a laboratory. But the number of people going for testing is declining rapidly. In recent days, according to Le Parisien, just 15,000 people in France took a Covid test – the lowest number, it said, since the pandemic started.

Reimbursement rules for testing changed on March 1st, with only certain categories of people – minors, those aged 65 and over, or immunosuppressed patients – covered for the entire cost of testing.

From Friday, only PCR test results will be transmitted to authorities for data purposes, meaning pharmacists that only offer antigen testing will be locked out of the online interface to record test results.

The reason for the shift in priorities is to maintain “minimal epidemiological surveillance”, the Ministry of Health has reportedly told scientists.

As a result test certificates, showing a positive or negative result, will no longer be issued from July 1st. Since February 1st, anyone taking a test has had to give consent to share their data in order to obtain a certificate. 

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