It re-imposes the mask as mandatory in all closed public places, regardless of whether a health passport is required to access them
The Government of France updated this Thursday the measures to combat the new wave of coronavirus cases, for which it promised to advance the vaccination campaign, with booster doses for all citizens over 18 years of age, and also to make the mask in all closed public places, regardless of whether the covid passport is required to access.
The Gallic Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, appeared to reel off the battery of measures that his Government had already been anticipating for days. “We believe that we cannot overcome this wave without resorting to more restrictive tools,” he argued, a day after the health authorities notified more than 32,500 new cases in 24 hours.
The mask will once again be mandatory in all enclosed spaces and, locally, its use in the street can also be extended if deemed necessary. Covid passport controls will also be expanded, which, for example, will be required to access the Christmas markets that are open for the upcoming holidays.
Obtaining said passport will also suffer variations, since the antigen tests or PCR that the unvaccinated must attach will only be valid for 24 hours, instead of the current 72, and as of January 15 it will include the booster dose, which will become available to all citizens residing in France over the age of 18 as long as five months have passed since the last injection.
Reopening of the vaccination centers
“We are going to open, reopen or amplify the existing vaccination centers from this weekend,” announced Véran, who defended the importance of advancing in this campaign. “At the beginning of 2022”, children between the ages of five and eleven can foreseeably begin to be vaccinated, as endorsed this Thursday by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for the case of the drug developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.
The minister assured that, if it did not have this “important vaccination coverage”, France would face this new spike in infections in a considerably worse situation, to the extent that the unvaccinated have “ten times more” chances of being admitted to a hospital if they contract covid-19 than those who have already completed the established pattern.
Véran ruled out the need for a new confinement, mobility restrictions or a curfew, alluding to measures that were applied in previous waves.
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