Seeing the faces of his colleagues or his mistress in full, no longer taking out his health passport to have a coffee at the bar… most of the anti-COVID restrictions were lifted on Monday in France against a backdrop of calls for caution in the face of “ rebound” of the epidemic.
Anyone who wants to can now go to cinemas, theatres, restaurants, fairs… without showing proof of a vaccination passport. Or even walk with your face uncovered in the corridors of schools and the shelves of shops.
However, there is no question of the end of the mask, which remains compulsory in transport and in health establishments. Companies can always decide to impose it on their employees and the Ministry of Education “strongly” recommends it to contact cases “indoors for 7 days after the occurrence of the confirmed case”.
For its part, a “health” passport, which also works with a negative test for the virus, is maintained in health establishments and nursing homes.
If at the beginning of March, when these relief measures were announced by the government, the strong and long fifth wave of the epidemic was clearly coming down again, this is no longer the case. In recent days, the number of new positive cases has even started to rise again in France: the average for the last seven days was more than 65,250 new cases on Sunday, against 50,646 a week earlier.
This trend reversal has so far had no effect in critical care services, even if an increase in the number of hospitalizations was recorded on Sunday.
“We still have to wait a little bit to see if this trend is confirmed, but indeed at the European level, we see the same thing”, indicated Sunday on France Inter Yazdan Yazdanpanah, head of the infectious diseases department at the hospital. Bichat in Paris.
This member of the Scientific Council sees “three reasons” for this: the presence of the BA.2 sub-variant, “a little more transmissible”, the “reopening of schools” after his holidays and “probably a relaxation of the population, which is quite regular”.
“Stay Vigilant”
Conceding that there was currently a “resumption of cases”, the head of government, Jean Castex, however excluded, on Saturday, from “changing strategy”.
“For two years, there have always been risks and benefits in what we do. We are not in a situation of total certainty”, explained Yazdan Yazdanpanah, recalling that this time “80% of people” are vaccinated and that “a significant proportion of the population has already been affected by the infection” . “That immunity, probably, protects us. In any case in terms of hospitalizations ”.
In fact, in its most pessimistic scenarios, the Institut Pasteur, a prestigious French research center, estimates that the peak of contamination “could exceed 100,000 daily cases in March”, a high figure but “very much lower than the peak in January”. , according to new models released Thursday.
If after two years of pandemic, the end of the restrictions promises to be welcomed with relief by many French people, the scientists call on everyone to keep precautions, vis-à-vis for example the immunocompromised.
“It is too early to turn the Covid page even if we really want to! We must remain vigilant, ”urged Rémi Salomon, president of the establishment committee of the AP-HP (Hospitals of Paris) on Twitter on Tuesday.
The government has also decided to open “from now on the fourth dose of vaccine to those over 80 years old” and “strongly recommends to people who are fragile because of their age or their pathologies to maintain the wearing of a mask in closed places and in large gatherings.
In the political world, the return to normal is widely accepted. No opponent of Mr. Macron, on the left or on the right, considered the easing of the measures too rapid, in a context mainly dominated by the war in Ukraine and its economic and social consequences.