Alexandre Chauveau, Thihaud Hue and Nina Droff 12:05 p.m., December 26, 2021

The symbolic barrier of 100,000 contaminations per day has been crossed.

Curb the epidemic without slowing the economy, it is the dilemma of the government which reassesses the situation on Monday during a health defense council.

New measures are also being considered. 

DECRYPTION

On Monday, the government will form a new health council, just before the exceptional council of ministers which must transform the health post into a vaccination pass.

If new measures are expected, the advice will initially serve to take stock of the epidemic and in particular the Omicron variant.

The latest data available will be studied in an attempt to determine the real dangerousness of this new variant, its contagiousness but also the effectiveness of the different doses of vaccine on it. 

Time between second and third dose shortened?

Based on these answers, several measures are on the table.

First, the time between the second and the third dose could again be shortened from four to three months with the aim of speeding up the recall campaign.

Another measure studied: the isolation period for people with contact cases could be generalized to 7 days, regardless of the variant concerned.

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Double proof: pass and negative test

The executive, however, seeks to find a balance to avoid paralyzing the country with too many people in isolation.

Another track that has come up in recent hours is the possibility, in certain situations, of having to present a negative test, in addition to the vaccination pass.

A double documentary proof, in a way, which could be requested in the places most at risk.

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"The question is to know how far to go, in fact, in terms of police measures and verification, for example, of the identities of people who present a vaccine test", asks Patrick Martin-Genier, essayist.

To encourage vaccination, the government also plans to make the vaccination pass validated from the first injection and no longer seven days after the second dose, as is the case today.

740% surge in work stoppages

Strong measures, all the more expected as the level of contamination has doubled in three weeks.

France had 50,000 cases per day on December 4, with its share of contact cases and work stoppages.

Stops that have jumped in a month and a half by 740%.

One of the solutions to not paralyze the country is to relax the strategy of isolation.

"The company may be at a standstill because of contaminations. You can imagine that if you have more than 200,000 contaminations every day in five days, that makes a million French people at a standstill," explains Benjamin Davido, infectious disease specialist at Raymond-Poincaré hospital in Garches,

"It's urgent"

And the timing is tight for the government that wants to act.

"The executive wants to move very quickly. At first, it may be necessary to take advice from the Council of State extremely quickly to vote the bill in the National Assembly and the Senate in early January. So there is urgently, because we can clearly see that the rise of the Omicron variant is likely to affect on the one hand public health, but also greatly the economic activity of the country ", concludes the essayist.