French President Macron recently made an announcement about the government's response to the increase in cases due to the spread of the delta variant in France. There was speculation in advance that there would be closures again. Prior to vaccines, the approach has been to allow people out with masks until the hospitals reach a threshold where there is the danger of overwhelming them, at which point the government implements a lockdown.
The announcement was not that they were considering lockdowns. Instead, Macron announced a plan to motivate people to get vaccinated. Starting in August, people will have to show a health pass to get into places like restaurants, shopping centers, and long-distance public transport.
The things that count toward the health pass include: full vaccination, recent past covid (a positive test more than 10 days but less than six months ago), past covid plus one dose of vaccine, a negative PCR or antigen test in the past 48 hours. The health pass is a QR code can be displayed on your phone, or you can show a paper copy as well.
Covid tests have been free, but they are now going to start charging to avoid people gaming the system by covid testing every few days.
I especially like the allowance for a single dose of vaccine for those with past covid, as we have ample evidence at this point to support this. The French also have official guidance on third doses for immunocompromised people, so they don't have to sneak around to get a booster if they don't respond well to the initial two doses. And another part of the announcement was that those who were vaccinated in the early part of 2021 at the initial roll-out will be eligible for boosters in the fall, so that they will be protected through the winter.
There is an exclusion for kids under 12 (who are not eligible for vaccination) and wiggle room for those 12-18. The nature of the wiggle room is not specified, but rules with wiggle room are a very French concept.
People who work in health-care facilities around vulnerable people (nursing homes, hospitals, etc) will be required to fulfil the requirements the health pass for work.
In response to the President's address, the website for making appointments to get vaccinated crashed as millions of people tried to sign up all at once. So the plan appears to have had the desired effect. The large majority of these appointments are in people under 35. Most of the elderly are vaccinated already.
The public response has involved a lot of complaining, but not at the level of vitriol I would expect if this were implemented in the US. A common source of complaint is from small business owners who worry about the added complication of checking health passes before their customers can come in to their establishment.
There is probably a political aspect to all of this, as there is a presidential election in April, and if this strategy works to get France to herd immunity, Macron will be able to say that he made it happen. Of course, it's possible that it will backfire on him, since there are bound to be some people who don't like it. But it appears so far that most of the vaccine hesitant in France are not diehard anti-vaxxers, but just young people at low risk from covid who have been putting off signing up for a vaccine. It's really only been in the past few weeks that supply has been greater than demand there.
My personal interest in all this is that I am moving to France next year, and while my antibody response to vaccination was within the normal range, it was below average, perhaps in the 10th or 20th percentile relative to others vaccinated at the same time. I'm not worried that I'm going to die of covid, but I would rather not get a breakthrough infection, and I'm not thrilled by the CDC's recent announcement that their goal is mainly to prevent hospitalizations rather than to get to herd immunity.
Vive la France.