Regarding the school, "there will be announcements by the end of the week, I hope from Friday", on "the protocol which will have been retained" and "will apply from the start of the first zone ", Zone B, which will return from vacation on February 21, he said after the Council of Ministers.

A first meeting was held on Tuesday between Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, the teachers' unions and the parents' federations, before a new meeting and an opinion from the High Council for Public Health (HAS) expected on Thursday.

On the contamination front, “the frank drop, we are there”, added Mr. Attal.

French government spokesman Gabriel Attal at the Elysee Palace in Paris on February 9, 2022 Ludovic MARIN AFP

"The level of hospitalized people remains very high, higher than the record we had seen in the spring of 2020, but in the projections we are making (...), there are reasons to hope that at this time horizon the situation will have improved enough for us to be able to lift these final measures,” he added.

The president of the Council for the orientation of the vaccine strategy Alain Fischer had a little earlier, during a hearing in the Senate, estimated that a lifting of the vaccine pass was possible "by the end of March" at the beginning of "April" if a series of conditions were met.

"From a scientific and medical point of view, we need a reduced incidence rate, we are at 2,500. Reduced means significantly less, at least 10 or 20 times less, but there are elements of context, you giving a number would not make sense," he said.

He also spoke of the need for “the current hospital overload to have disappeared, for hospitals to return to a normal state of operation and for non-Covid patients to be able to be treated without delay, without delay”.

It also requires "high booster vaccination coverage", he said.

The government's "Mr. vaccines" stressed that the foresight exercise was "fragile ground", but according to him "it can go quite quickly", because the incidence decreases "rather quickly".

Gabriel Attal agreed, indicating that the vaccine pass would be lifted "as soon as there is a normalization of the situation in the hospital, that is to say that there will no longer be a hospital under very high tension due to the Covid".

At school, "we give ourselves ten days in advance of the start of the school year, in accordance with the wishes of the President of the Republic", he also argued.

During meetings with representatives of parents and students, the government "wants to move forward in three directions", said Mr. Attal: first "to relax" the level of the protocol which is today at level 3 out of 4, to move forward on the issue of children wearing masks, as well as on "testing policy".

© 2022 AFP