For the president of the Association of Emergency Physicians of France, this decision was taken in a moment of “euphoria” by the former Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, during the legislative campaign.
As contaminations multiply and Tuesday recorded more than 205,000 new cases of Covid-19, several actors are calling on the executive to reinstate certain health rules. This Wednesday morning, the boss of the Association of Emergency Physicians of France (AMUF), Patrick Pelloux, thus pleaded in turn for a return of the compulsory mask in transport.
Ending this requirement was “a mistake“, judged the representative, adding that this decision had been made in a moment”of euphoriaby the former Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, during the legislative campaign. “We had to keep the mask, at least in transport“, Considered Patrick Pelloux, who hopes to find a”compromiseallowing us to return to the situation of a few months ago. Reinstate the mandatory mask in public transport, wear it voluntarily in front of fragile people and put on hydroalcoholic gel.everywhere“will avoid”the horror“of a new confinement, in a few months, if a new variant emerges, pleaded the doctor.
This question of the mandatory mask divides. For the time being, the authorities are appealing to collective responsibility, enjoining travelers to wear it in transport and crowded places – an instruction forcefully repeated by the new Minister of Health, François Braun, on Tuesday at the National Assembly – without imposing it. A vision challenged by Patrick Pelloux: “We have a disciplined, courageous people who understand things. […] To say that we are appealing to the common sense of the French people, I do not believe in it for a single moment. I trust the French people when we tell them that we have to do it like that. People, you don’t tell them anything, they won’t do anything“, he argued, Wednesday morning.
In its bill “now provisionally a monitoring and health security system in the fight against Covid-19“, Presented this week in the Council of Ministers, the executive does not plan to restore the compulsory mask. But this could change during parliamentary debates, or if the epidemic accelerated its course through France. In Nice, Christian Estrosi has also taken the lead in announcing the return of the mask in transport.
For the reintegration of non-vaccinated caregivers
Faced with the hospital crisis, the emergency doctor once again pleaded for the reinstatement of caregivers not vaccinated against Covid-19 and suspended since last September. “There, the priority is to reopen beds, so we have to reintegrate them, that will make a few thousand people, that’s as many beds as we will reopen“, he advanced. However, the Amuf representative added that it might be necessary to put on the table the “mandatory vaccination in recruitment for caregivers“.
The executive remains opposed to this track, believing that the time has not yet come. Facing the deputies of the law commissionFrançois Braun considered that “12,000“Staff were suspended, a figure that includes technical and administrative staff alongside caregivers. For its part, the FHF is also reluctant: there is no cohort of non-vaccinated personnel, recently analyzed the representative organization of tricolor hospitals, in a study. “About 4,000 to 5,000 professionals from all professions, caregivers and non-caregivers“, are still suspended on April 1, estimates the federation, or 0.3% of the total of agents in the hospital public service. A drop of water, and certainly not enough to save the hospital.
SEE ALSO – Christian Estrosi announces the wearing of a compulsory mask in transport in Nice