France is facing a wave of the Omicron variant, pushing the government to take new measures, in particular on the vaccination pass, teleworking, or even wearing a mask outdoors. Follow all the news related to Covid-19 in France and around the world.
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Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot assured that culture was not “sacrificed” after the new measures to fight the coronavirus, and that the government would continue to help the sector.
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The discos will remain closed for three additional weeks, from January 3, announces the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne.
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A “race against the clock” against Omicron: barely two weeks after the government’s announcement of wanting to transform the health pass into a vaccination pass, the bill arrives this Wednesday in committee at the National Assembly, fifteen days before its expected entry into force.
The government has accelerated its schedule, despite some criticism from the opposition: initially scheduled for application at the end of January, the text will be examined by the Law Commission at the Palais Bourbon on Wednesday, after a hearing at 2:30 p.m. with Minister of Health Olivier Véran. The text will then be discussed in the Senate Chamber from January 5 and its entry into force is scheduled for January 15.
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Antigenic screening tests for Covid-19, which have the advantage of delivering a result in just a few minutes, are less sensitive to the Omicron variant than to previous variants, US health authorities warned on Tuesday. This means that these tests are more likely to indicate a negative result despite an infection – the notorious false negatives – if a person is infected with Omicron. “Preliminary data suggests that antigenic tests detect the Omicron variant well, but with reduced sensitivity,” the US Medicines Agency (FDA) said in a statement.
