France is showing how the vaccination rate can be improved with incentives for vaccinated people and compulsory vaccination for certain occupational groups.

In the “most vaccine-skeptical country in the world”, as the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit wrote at the start of the vaccination campaign in January, around 80 percent of all residents over the age of twelve are now fully vaccinated.

France has thus overtaken Germany.

What is even more important to the French: they now have a better vaccination rate than the British, who were held up to them as a role model for a long time.

Michaela Wiegel

Political correspondent based in Paris.

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This success can be attributed to President Emmanuel Macron.

He made vaccination a top priority in July when, after initial successes, the vaccination campaign was making slow progress.

This required a certain courage: the French variant of the so-called lateral thinker movement has been making itself heard loudly with protests every Saturday for weeks.

With his televised address on July 12th, Macron triggered a real vaccination boom.

The French President announced incentives for vaccinated people in his speech.

You can now go to restaurants and cafés, theaters, cinemas, swimming pools and amusement parks without a corona test.

In a number of large shopping centers, entry is also only possible with the proof of vaccination known as the “health pass”.

Those who recover can also receive a health passport if they can prove their previous infection with a PCR test.

No staff shortages feared

The health pass is compulsory for long-distance travel by train, coach and on flights within France. It must also be presented for major sporting events and concerts. A negative test result must be presented without the passport. Soon there will be no more corona tests for health insurance costs. From October 15, unvaccinated French will have to pay for the tests to go to the restaurant or the theater themselves. Prime Minister Jean Castex has now recalled this.

The President has also issued a compulsory vaccination for all professional groups in nursing homes and hospitals, for all resident doctors and their employees, pharmacists, medical students and firefighters. A total of 2.7 million French people are affected by the compulsory vaccination. It comes into force on Wednesday. "We would even have liked to have had a compulsory vaccination earlier," said the chairman of the French hospital association Fédération hospitalière de France, Frédéric Valletoux, the radio station Europe 1. It is good that the law applies now. He did not fear that there would be staff shortages because unvaccinated nurses would have to be suspended from duty.

The French Ministry of Health estimates that around 300,000 care workers are still not fully vaccinated.

"The group of the unvaccinated is getting smaller every day," said Valletoux.

According to the Ministry of Health, 88 percent of the nursing staff received a first dose of vaccine on September 7, compared with 94 percent of the general practitioners and their employees.

At the beginning of May, according to these statistics, 51 percent of employees in the medical and care sector had received a vaccine dose.

Already since compulsory vaccination for measles

France has long had compulsory vaccination for health professionals. Those who work there have to get vaccinated against tetanus, polio, diphtheria and hepatitis B. Since 2018 there has been an extended compulsory vaccination for all small children. Parents must have them vaccinated against eleven contagious diseases if they want to attend a day nursery, kindergarten or elementary school. Checks are made to see if the children have been vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus, polio, whooping cough, hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type b, pneumococci, meningococci, measles, mumps and rubella.

A measles epidemic was decisive for the extended compulsory vaccination. "Children are still dying of measles, which is unacceptable in Louis Pasteur's homeland," said then Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. French politicians have been worried about the hard core of those who oppose vaccination and the declining willingness to vaccinate for some time. That is the background against which Macron decided to take decisive action.

On Saturday, as on the previous weekend, there were protests against the alleged health dictatorship. The Ministry of the Interior stated the number of participants as a total of 121,000. The number of participants has been falling for weeks. Demonstrations took place in Strasbourg, Lyon, Bordeaux and Marseille on Saturday. In Paris, the protests degenerated into violent confrontations with the security forces. According to the police, 96 rioters were arrested. Three police officers were slightly injured, according to the Interior Ministry.