In his New Year's Eve address to the nation President Emmanuel Macron made clear his intention to speed up France's Covid vaccination programme, apparently stung by the country's slow performance compared with many others. Privately he is said to be angry at its “unwarranted slowness” and as a result the country is expected to step up its campaign this week. So far the number of vaccinations in France measures in the low hundreds compared with tens or hundreds of thousands - or even millions - in some other countries. Caroline Coq-Chodorge reports on the public mistrust that lies behind France's sluggish start in vaccinating its population.
The French health ministry reported 26,457 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours on Wednesday, but the number of persons hospitalised for the disease declined by 183.
As 2020 draws to a close amid the continuing coronavirus pandemic, Mediapart knocked on the doors of the inhabitants of an apartment block in the town of Meaux, east of Paris, to ask them about their experiences living through a year unlike any other. The lurking threat of the virus was of course a constant angst, but for many, it is the social and economic consequences that have marked them, and which leave them fearful for the future. Mathilde Goanec reports (illustrations by Fanny Monier).
A French man resident in Britain and who arrived this month in the town of Tours, west-central France, has been tested positive for the new variant of the coronavirus which is suspected of being particularly contagious, although it is still unkown if it causes more severe forms of Covid-19.
An anti Covid-19 vaccine developed by US pharma firm Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech has been approved for use in France by the country's top health authority, the Haute Autorité de la santé (HAS), with vaccinations due to start on a voluntazry basis on Sunday, with a priority given for those most at risk.
In an unusally strong statement posted on Twitter, the European Union's transport commissioner, Adina Valean, commenting on the massive logjam of trucks around the English port of Dover following border restrictions introduced by France after a new contagious strain of the coronavirus was found in the UK, said 'I deplore that France went against our recommendations'.
France has reopened its borders with the Britain – which were closed at the weekend due to fears over the spread of infections by a new coronavirus strain identified in England – on condition that travellers carry proof of testing negative for the virus, but the huge backlog of trucks that have been piling up around the normally busy port of Dover is expected to take days to clear.
Immigrants in France who were this year in frontline jobs during the coronavirus epidemic, including healthcare staff, shop workers and cleaners, are being offered fast-track French citizenship.
France is to reopen its borders with the UK, closed earlier this week over fears about the new variant of the coronavirus detected in England, but only to blocked truck drivers, French citizens and others resident in France, and on condition they present a negative result of a test for the virus, according to French media reports.
France on Sunday joined a growing number of EU countries closing their borders to British travellers following the rapid spread in England of a reportedly more infectious variant of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.
Immunologist Jean-François Delfraissy, president of the Frances advisory body on Covid-19, the Scientific Council, said the coronavirus vaccine rollout will take longer than previously envisaged, and that a return to normal life post-epidemic is not likely to occur before the autumn of 2021.
