To be able to see the whole faces of your colleagues, your teacher, not to have to show the health card to drink a coffee … the main body of restrictions for the treatment of Covid is removed from today in France. However, warnings remain on the alert in the face of the resurgence of the epidemic.
From today, anyone can access cinemas, theaters, restaurants, public entertainment activities without showing the health card. Or also circulate in school corridors and in shops without a mask.
However, the end of the mask has not come, which remains mandatory in transport and in hospitals and health centers. Companies have the power to impose it on their employees and the Ministry of Education has issued a “strong recommendation” for the use of a mask in case of contact “indoors for a period of 7 days from the confirmed contact”.
The health pass, which includes a negative test for the virus, remains in health care centers and nursing homes.
In early March, when relief measures were announced by the government, the fifth wave of the epidemic was in clear decline. This is no longer the case. In recent days, the number of new cases has been rising in France: the average of the last seven days was yesterday at 65,250 new cases, compared to 50,646 last week.
The reversal of the trend does not currently affect the admissions to the Intensive Care Units, even if an increase in the number of hospitalizations was recorded yesterday.
“We still have to wait and see if this trend will be confirmed, but in fact at European level we see the same thing,” Yazdan Yazdanpanah, head of the Infectious Diseases Service at Bichat Hospital in Paris, told France Inter.
A member of the Scientific Council, Yazdan Yazdanpanah, explains that there are three reasons for the resurgence: “the presence of the BA2 subtype, which is a bit more contagious, the reopening of schools after the winter break, and probably the relaxation of the population, which is quite normal.”
“Stay alert”
Acknowledging that there is currently an increase in cases, Prime Minister Jean Castex ruled out a change in strategy.
“For the past two years, there have been risks and benefits to what we are doing. We are not in a state of absolute certainty,” said Yazdan Yazdanpanah. has already been hit by the virus. “This immunity probably protects us. In any case in the matter of hospitalization.”
In its most pessimistic scenarios, the Pasteur Institute estimates that at the peak of the wave, daily cases could exceed 100,000 in March, a number higher but much lower than the peak in January, according to models released on Thursday.
If, after two years, the end of the restrictions is expected to be accepted with relief by many French people, scientists are calling for conservation measures to be maintained, for example against the immunocompromised.
“It’s too early to turn Covid’s page, even if we really want to! We have to be vigilant,” Remy Salomon, chairman of the Paris hospital network committee, said on Twitter.
The French government has also decided to give a fourth dose of the vaccine to people over the age of 80 and strongly recommends that those who are vulnerable due to their age or underlying illness continue to use the mask indoors and in large concentrations.
In the political world, the lifting of restrictive measures met with unanimity. None of Emanuel Macron’s political opponents, left or right, considered the easing of the measures to be hasty, especially at a time dominated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its economic and social consequences.
SOURCE: ΑΠΕ-ΜΠΕ
Source: Capital
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