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Drivers, shop staff, cleaners – France lists 20 priority jobs for Covid vaccines

France has created a list of 20 professions which will be prioritised for a Covid vaccine, in addition to the healthworkers, teachers, police and emergency staff who are already eligible, from Saturday.

Published: 20 April 2021 15:58 CEST
Updated: 21 April 2021 08:53 CEST

Drivers, shop staff, cleaners - France lists 20 priority jobs for Covid vaccines

For people in eligible groups, finding appointments is not always easy. Photo: Nicolas Tucat/AFP

At present, everyone over the age of 55 is eligible for a Covid vaccine in France, although in many areas it’s still not easy to get an appointment even if you are eligible.

The government is therefore creating ‘priority slots’ for certain professions – in the same way as teachers, childcare workers and police officers are already given priority slots at vaccine centres.

Healthworkers and domestic workers who work with vulnerable groups are vaccinated through their workplace.

The next stage will be opening up the vaccine to all under 55s, envisaged for mid June although there is no definite date yet.

READ ALSO When will I be eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine?

Over 55s in the listed professions – thought to be around 400,000 people – will be eligible for priority slots from Saturday, April 24th, the labour ministry announced on Tuesday. The priority slots will be available at vaccine centres only, with a list of participating centres due to the finalised shortly.

People in one of the priority professions will have to provide a payslip as proof of employment, or make a déclaration sur l’honneur (a sworn statement) that they are in an eligible group.

READ ALSO: What does it mean in France when you ‘declare on your honour’?

The full list of professions published by the Labour Ministry is;

Lorry drivers
Bus drivers
Taxi or VTC (eg Uber) drivers
Public transport inspectors or ticket sellers
Refuse collectors
Street cleaners
Employees at recycling/waste sorting centres
Cleaners
Supermarket cashiers
Self-service employees in the food industry
Butchers
Bakers
Pâtissiers
Employees working in the food industry
Company managers working in the food industry
Funeral directors
Abattoir workers
Employees at food processing factories
Security guards
Building managers or gardiennes

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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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