PARIS (Reuters) – The government has decided to speed up the implementation of the vaccine pass in France in the face of the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, with a bill presented to the extraordinary council of ministers on Monday with a view to final adoption of the text by Parliament by mid-January, Gabriel Attal announced on Tuesday.
The government initially planned to examine this draft vaccination pass, which is supposed to replace the health pass, on January 5 for adoption at the end of January.
“We have decided to accelerate and bring forward this calendar,” said the government spokesperson after a meeting around Prime Minister Jean Castex with associations of local elected officials, while the rate of The incidence of COVID-19 reached a record with 537 infected people per 100,000 inhabitants in one week.
“(This) will allow Parliament to be in a position to examine this text next week (…) and we are now aiming for a definitive adoption of the vaccination pass from the first half of January,” he said. added.
“We do not have a second to lose in the face of the Omicron variant. The sooner we have the vaccine pass, the better we will be protected”, insisted Gabriel Attal.
The epidemic wave that France is currently facing is mainly due to the Delta variant, already present in the territory for many months, but the Omicron variant detected only in November in southern Africa is spreading rapidly.
This variant now seems to represent more than one in three contamination in Paris, said Gabriel Attal.
“TURBULENCE ZONE”
Faced with this threat, the government is prioritizing vaccination and the administration of a booster dose likely to better protect against the Omicron variant and severe forms of the disease, while encouraging unvaccinated people to cross the threshold. not by depriving them of the health pass.
“We are fully pressing the accelerator,” said Gabriel Attal, announcing that the target of 20 million booster doses administered had been reached on Tuesday four days in advance. Two million additional immunization slots will be created by the end of the year, he promised.
At the end of this meeting in Matignon, the government spokesperson assured that there was a consensus between the national executive and the local elected officials on the “need to limit as much as possible the gatherings during this holiday period and obviously on New Year’s Eve “and on the fact that the extension of the school holidays should be a” last resort “.
“The forecasts are worrying, we are entering a zone of turbulence (…) but we have the weapons to fight, we have the will to mobilize and we have the means to thwart the forecasts”, he said said.
(Report Tangi Salaün and Bertrand Boucey, edited by Matthieu Protard)