Long day for Olivier Véran. Thursday, January 21, 2021 in the morning, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran, heard in the Senate by the Law Commission on the bill for the extension of the state of health emergency, spoke on the coronavirus pandemic. And his statements, broadcast on the channel Public Senate, will not please the French. “Even with the best organization and all the supplies that would arrive on time, we could not have vaccinated all vulnerable groups by the summer”, he declared while the government, criticized on the slowness of the vaccination campaign, recently generalized the curfew to the whole territory. "Reason why we ask for the continuation of sanitary measures until the fall. It's mathematically defensible. " The Minister of Health also raised the possibility of a third confinement in the face of the arrival in France of new variants. “We are not going to lie: the development and spread of the variant of English origin on French territory can be a determining element in the strategies to fight against the epidemic that we could deploy in the coming days and in the coming weeks ”, Olivier Véran added. “And if the share of English variant in France were to increase significantly and we were to follow an English trajectory, containment would probably become an absolute necessity. So we track it down with daily data (…) When I talk about a race against time, I weigh my words. "
Two meters away, FFP2 masks … These new barrier gestures mentioned by the High Council for Public Health
Invited to 20 hours on TF1’s television news the same evening, Olivier Véran again mentioned the possibility of a third confinement … but also that of “New barrier gestures.” Presenter Gilles Bouleau asks: "The independent health authorities say that we should expand or improve the barrier gestures (…) is this something that you are considering, that you would like to impose?" The minister then replies: "There is a referral from the High Council for Public Health on the evolution of barrier gestures due to the appearance of these new variants (…) On the question of the distance of two meters when one is not wearing a mask, this is a question that was raised by the High Council for which we asked health authorities in addition and to see if there is place to rework health protocols for all situations related to this gap without mask. ” Regarding masks, precisely, and their effectiveness (or rather their ineffectiveness for some), Olivier Véran continues: “The High Council, once again, has pronounced itself on this question and considers that filtering masks for the general public of category 1, which filter out more than 90% of viruses, are sufficient and that it is not necessary to migrate towards surgical masks or FFP2. ” However, he qualifies: "The High Council recommends us, and recommends to the French, this is the recommendation that I also make to them, to no longer use the homemade mask that you made at home, even by following tutorials on the Internet … Unfortunately, these masks offer less filtering capacity. On the other hand, I can tell you that 95 to 99% of the masks that you can buy in supermarkets, called consumer masks, are filter masks. ”
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