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LATEST: French government to re-impose state of health emergency

The French government announced on Wednesday it will restore the state of health emergency in the country as it battles to stem the second wave of Covid-19 infections.

Published: 14 October 2020 19:23 CEST
LATEST: French government to re-impose state of health emergency
Illustration photo: AFP

The state of emergency will be re-established on Saturday, the government has said.

This will pave the way for the government to introduce new and stricter measures – whether at local or national level – to fight the resurgence of coronavirus infections.

France first declared a national State of Health Emergency in March, which allowed the government to introduce tight rules on movement of people and forced them to stay at home. I ended on July 10th.

President Emmanuel Macron announced tighter restrictions during a televised interview on Wednesday. As had been widely speculated he announced a nighttime curfew in the hardest hit areas of the country such as Paris and other major cities.

Macron said residents of those cities would not be allowed to be outdoors between 9:00 pm (1900 GMT) and 6:00 am (0400 GMT) from Saturday, for a duration of at least four weeks.

“We have to act. We need to put a brake on the spread of the virus,” Macron said, adding the measure would stop people visiting restaurants and private homes in the late evening and night.

Under a state of emergency the government will also have the power to make decisions quickly and not require measures to pass the full legislative process through the Assemblée Nationale and the Senate, as is usually the case.

The move will allow  “measures proportional to the health risks to be taken”, and will enter into force on Saturday, according to minutes from a cabinet meeting on Wednesday. It was not clear how long the state of emergency would last for.

France was facing “a health catastrophe”, the minutes said.

Covid-19 cases have been steadily rising in France since the summer and in recent weeks hospital numbers and in particular those in intensive care.

On Wednesday French health chiefs reported there were just over 9,000 Covid-19 patients in hospital, 1, 664 of whom were being treated in intensive care. That reflects a similar number of patients in intensive care as there were at the end of May.

Authorities also announced the death of a further 104 coronavirus patients on Wednesday.

READ ALSO What does a state of health emergency mean for France?
 

 

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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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