France will lift most of its Covid restrictions on Monday, scrapping Emmanuel Macron’s flagship vaccine pass and ending compulsory indoor mask-wearing in schools and many public spaces, as the government vows to ease pressure on French people’s daily lives despite a rise in infections, reports The Guardian.
Less than month before April’s presidential vote – with polls showing the centrist Macron is favourite to win re-election – the government has brought forward its promise to ease restrictions before the summer.
From Monday, schoolchildren aged six and over will not have to wear masks inside classrooms, for the first time since September 2020. Masks will no longer be mandatory in shops, public services or workplaces. But masks will remain compulsory on all public transport, as well as at hospitals and for people visiting elderly loved ones in care homes.
The prime minister, Jean Castex, conceded in an interview this weekend that there had been an upturn in cases “like everywhere in Europe”, but he said pressure on hospital emergency wards was going down and the BA2 variant of Omicron was more contagious but “seemingly less dangerous”.
Castex said that while the government continued its strategy of easing restrictions, he “strongly recommended people who are vulnerable because of their age or pathologies to keep wearing masks in indoor spaces”.
The end of the vaccine pass means that for the first time since last summer, people no longer need to show a QR code to eat out in a restaurant, go to a café, work out at the gym, board a long-distance train, go to the cinema or borrow a library book.