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COVID-19

What could the French government decide at today’s Covid-19 health council?

Top French ministers will hold a health council meeting on the Covid-19 health crisis on Monday and could decide on further measures that may impact how the country celebrates Christmas.

Customers at a bar in Saint-Malo, northwest France, have their digital health passes scanned by a police officer
Photo: Jean-Francois Monier / AFP

UPDATE: You can read about the measures taken by the government, including the closure of nightclubs, in this new article HERE.

The article below is now out of date.

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France’s conseil de défense sanitaire was due to meet on Monday morning to discuss responses to the fifth wave of Covid-19 currently raging in France.

The government is considering adapting public health measures in light of the latest figures – more than 11,500 people are now hospitalised with the virus, including 2,066 in intensive care. The influential Pasteur Institute has forecast that the number of Covid patients in ICU could pass 3,000 by December 12th.

READ ALSO France records 50,000 daily Covid cases as hospital admissions rise

The situation now

“A patient is admitted to intensive care every 10 minutes. We have experienced this during the second, the third wave,” Health Minister Olivier Véran told franceinfo on Friday. “If nothing changes, we could have a peak at the end of January, with a very large number of seriously ill people.” 

Monday’s health council meeting at the Elysee Palace will determine “whether additional measures should be taken”, to contain this latest outbreak in the lead-up to Christmas, amid additional concern over the Omicron variant.

What’s up for discussion?

Monday’s meeting is mainly intended to be a ‘progress report’, an unnamed source told Le Monde, ‘with perhaps some adjustments here and there’. So, no major changes are in store.

The key focus is on continuing the vaccination push, on getting more people to come forward for a third dose to create what Véran described last week as the ‘firewall effect’.

“What was decided nearly 10 days ago was the right decision to take,” Macron said on Friday, during a trip to the United Arab Emirates. “The strategy we have today allows us to resist. We must continue to vaccinate, to vaccinate, to vaccinate, to respect the barrier gestures as we do.”

The option of starting the school holidays early, in light of the decision in neighbouring Belgium to take this course of action, is also up for discussion – though it is believed the weight of opinion is not in favour of the move.

Meanwhile, opening immunisation to all children aged between five and 11 – not just those who, for various reasons, are considered health risks, is also expected to be up for discussion, according to the Ministry of Health, which mentions the announcement of a “precise timetable” after the meeting.

The ministry confirmed that “the opening of vaccination to all children” of this age group is planned “from the beginning of January 2022”. 

What’s not on the agenda

A return to routine working from home to contain the epidemic is believed not to be on the agenda. According to France Info radio, the possibility of lockdown – or even a curfew – is not up for discussion, nor are limits on the number of people in indoor venues. 

An Elysee Palace adviser told France Info that many more doses of vaccine will get to pharmacies, surgeries and vaccine centres this week. “The challenge is to see what last levers we can activate without placing constraints on vaccinated people,” the adviser said. 

Those sentiments echoed those of Véran, who advised more of the same on Friday: “If we change our daily behaviour, if we recreate a little social distancing, we can reduce by 10%, 15%, 20% the circulation of the virus, and then it totally changes the curves.”

Expect, then, encouragement and a warning after today’s meeting. The government wants to encourage the French to get their booster dose, and reiterate the importance of barrier gestures, such as wearing face masks in public places. It doesn’t want to spoil Christmas.

READ ALSO ‘We need to be careful’: Will France have a normal Christmas this year?

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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.

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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