This Wednesday February 9, 2022, after the ministerial council during which the Executive addressed the process to complete about the health situation in France, Gabriel Attal spoke about the end of the vaccine pass during a press brief. According to the government’s spokesman, the government considers there are “reasons to hope” that by “late March or early April we could lift the vaccine pass” because of the improvement of the health situation.
“There is a beginning of an improvement at the hospital, there are projections, modeling letting us hope that by late March or early April, the situation will be relaxed enough at the hospital we could lift the vaccine pass. We have reached a clean decrease. There are reasons to hope that until then, the situation would have improved enough so we would be able to lift these last measures. We always said measures would be lifted as soon as the health situation would allow it”, he claimed.
Invited by BFMTV last week to address France’s health situation, Olivier Véran also considered “the worst is behind us”. “We are reaching the hospitalization peak (…) we have passed the ICU peak for a dozen days”, he detailed.
As for the vaccine pass, the Health Minister announced he could put an end to it before July. “The vaccine pass will have an end; it is likely to be far before July given the current dynamic. When there will be no more treatment cancelled in our country, the usefulness of the vaccine pass will be surveyed”, he said, while supporting the importance of the latter: “We made the vaccine pass because we did not have the choice. There has been one million French who so far did not want to get vaccinated and who decided to get vaccinated. These are life saved”.
Furthermore, the minister also considers that ditching compulsory indoor facemask-wearing could be soon. “If the epidemic keeps decreasing with Omicron, it will be in the spring”, he said. The 4th dose issue has not been fully eluded by the government. “It is likely, but so far, a 4th dose is out of the question. A 4th dose could boost immunity, but it would make sense only if you are facing with a virus that could make you very sick, which is not the case with omicron”.
