The Parisian metro always crowded, illustration -

JP PARIENTE / SIPA

Faced with the increase in contaminations and the arrival of more contagious variants of the coronavirus, the National Academy of Medicine recommended, this Friday, to avoid speaking and calling in public transport, even masked.

Following the recommendations of the High Council for Public Health (HSCP), the Minister of Health Olivier Véran on Thursday called on the French to no longer use homemade masks deemed insufficiently filtering, nor the least filtering industrial fabric masks (so-called “Category 2”).

Two meters between each, "inapplicable"

A reinforcement which "falls under a principle of precaution" but which "lacks scientific proof", answered Friday the Academy of medicine in a press release, estimating that "the effectiveness of masks" general public "has never been fault when they are correctly worn ”.

"Such a change in the recommendations concerning a practice with which the entire population had succeeded in familiarizing themselves risks creating incomprehension and reviving doubts about the merits of the official recommendations", continues the Academy.

She also doubts the idea of ​​extending the physical distance from 1 to 2 meters between two people, a "proposition defensible in theory but inapplicable in practice".

Despite the "threat" of the new variants, the Academy recommends "not to modify the barrier gestures as they have been defined and improved for several months" but to recall the good behaviors.

Wear the mask at all times in public spaces "even when the physical distancing becomes greater than 1 meter", cover the mouth and nose with the mask ... And the compulsory wearing of the mask in public transport, where physical distancing is not cannot be respected, "must be accompanied by a very simple precaution: avoid speaking and telephoning", argues the Academy.

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