Should we abolish the health pass? "We must not go too fast"

Antoine Terrel 2:07 p.m., September 20, 2021

INTERVIEW

What future for the health pass? While the epidemic situation is improving day after day in France, Emmanuel Macron said he was ready Thursday to "lift certain constraints" in "territories where the virus circulates less quickly", without however giving a deadline. For his part, on Sunday, government spokesman Gabriel Attal spoke of a "reflection" to "adapt the rules" to "the local situation and the evolution of the local situation". A Defense Council is due to be held on Wednesday. But should we for all that give up the health pass? In any case, this is claimed by some local elected officials in certain departments or regions where the incidence rate is particularly low. On Europe 1, epidemiologist Antoine Flahault, director ofInstitute of Global Health of Geneva, is not opposed to the relaxation of certain measures in the least affected regions, but insists on the good impact of the health pass. 

“At the European level, this is what is happening,” he points out, when asked about a potential relaxation of the health pass.

For example, Denmark, "which is a country the size of a French region of 5.5 million inhabitants, has abandoned the 'Coronapass', which is the equivalent of the French health pass".

Denmark "had implemented it from last April, but abandoned it at the beginning of September. In Denmark, there are no more masks, no more use of the health pass, and the country is in an epidemiological situation comparable to that of Corrèze ", says the specialist. 

"The health pass has helped boost the vaccination coverage of the French"

However, when asked about the outright abolition of the health pass, Antoine Flahault believes that "we must not go too fast". "Not all regions are in the epidemiological situation" regions where the virus circulates very little, he indicates. In addition, recalls the researcher, "the extensive use of the health pass has boosted the vaccination coverage of the French. But beyond that, it represented a form of confinement of unvaccinated, untested people, who all cultural life, bars and restaurants, sports life and public transport were closed. "

Finally, says Antoine Flahault, "this extended use of the sanitary pass has an effectiveness very close to that of confinement, without having the social and economic consequences". Also, "keeping the possibility of reinstating the health pass in the event that there is an epidemic rebound that no one can predict today is something that seems very important to me. Hence, I believe, the work legislative at the moment ".