This is one of the last scars of this pandemic that is still visible on a daily basis, more than two years after the appearance of the first cases of Covid-19 in France. The French will be able to drop the mask in public transport from this Monday.
Bus, metro, train and taxi will no longer be subject to this obligation, Olivier Véran announced on Wednesday after the Council of Ministers. This also concerns airports and planes flying within the European Union, has also announced the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).
Remember to keep a mask handy, since “Wearing a mask is still recommended.“in transport, specified the Minister of Health, and it remains compulsory in health centers. The mask is particularly recommended for “the fragile people”assures Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, Minister Delegate for Transport, at the microphone of franceinfo.
Worried immunocompromised call for ‘solidarity’
“I appeal to encourage all French people to keep the mask in transport”, asked this Wednesday Yvanie Caillé, founder of Renaloo, an association of patients with kidney disease. She pleads for “a gesture of solidarity”.
According to her, the lifting of this obligation is “Worrying since the severely immunocompromised patients that we represent in our associations are poorly protected or not protected at all by vaccination. They remain at very high risk of serious forms.” They also represent a large proportion of hospitalized patients in intensive care and “people who die every day”.
“For a number of them, it may also mean their exclusion from public transport, as long as there is significant viral circulation”, she fears. She advises them to continue wearing an FFP2 mask.
If contaminations and hospitalizations are currently in sharp decline, scientists warn that the epidemic is probably not over.