It was finished late in the evening, the time of the final adjustments.
After weeks of work and back and forth between the federations and the government, the new health protocol has just been adopted and the relaxation of constraints in nursing homes has finally been decreed.
The Minister in charge of Autonomy, Brigitte Bourguignon, gives us exclusive details of its content.
You are going to lighten the rules in nursing homes.
What will change?
BRIGITTE BOURGUIGNON.
From today, vaccinated residents will be able to return to social life.
Even if there are always rules, our recommendations help to relax them.
It starts from the door of their room, it is, again, open to families.
Many have told me, "my mother, my father is deaf, I have to scream in a living room", they suffer a lot, giving them back these moments of intimacy is essential.
Collective activities, long suspended, are again authorized.
And the residents, who received the two injections, will be able to go to their loved ones, without being tested before and after, and to isolate themselves for seven days in their rooms.
For a year, relations have not been the same, I hear it and it is unbearable.
Today, 87% have received a first dose, 62% both and 50% have maximum coverage.
It is a great success.
Now that they are protected, the elderly want to be able to touch their children, hug them, talk to them without barriers, they need to find a more normal life and I will help them!
Do you confirm that the Plexiglas walls will be removed?
Yes, I don't want it anymore!
At one point, solutions had to be found to re-authorize visits and there weren't many.
But since then I have had many climbs on these walls, they pose a problem especially for people with cognitive disorders who need to touch, to have human contact to find their way around.
It also confuses caregivers.
You know, even if the staff surrounds them, people in institutions already feel isolated.
They have lost their bearings, their habits, their neighbors, so if in addition they have to see their own family behind plastic, it is not possible.
I ask that they be removed.
With this new protocol, you are going against the High Council of Public Health which considers that it is still too early to relax the rules ...
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We are not going against it, we remain very careful.
Keep in mind that this protocol is a first phase of relaxation.
Every fortnight, we will take stock, with the federations and the players, to find out whether it is perceived as too flexible or too rigid.
These recommendations may be adapted.
Some establishments did not wait to lighten the rules, but it is important to give them a framework.
Some ask, they need to be secure.
Vaccinated residents will once again be able to receive their families in their room./LP / Olivier Corsan
What do you decide for the unvaccinated?
A tiny part is by conviction.
Some could not receive doses because they were in pain at the time of the campaign or because there was a cluster in their establishment.
It is often not voluntary, so we cannot introduce discrimination, it would be a double penalty.
It is out of the question to exclude them from activities in nursing homes.
And it would be inhuman to say, "you are not vaccinated, you stay in your room".
I remind you, vaccination is a free choice.
However, we will have to protect them more and strengthen the barrier gestures around them.
The unvaccinated will be able to see their families but according to the rules of the old protocol, by being tested and by isolating themselves on their return.
So there is still a distinction ...
It's the only.
But they are allowed to go out and participate in the entertainment.
We have found a balance between giving new perspectives to the elderly and the need to bring the scourge of the virus under control.
It is our duty to continue to protect them as they are at greater risk of developing a severe form of the disease.
You choose to break the cordon sanitaire when only 40% of caregivers have chosen to be immunized, isn't that a problem?
Acceptability has increased since the start of the campaign, but much remains to be done.
We continue to persuade, to explain and we ask the school directors to do it again and again.
A few days ago, I brought Alain Fischer (Editor's note: Monsieur Vaccin) to the federations who gave them the scientific arguments to reassure them.
If I prefer to encourage than to oblige, vaccination is an act of citizenship that we owe almost to the people with whom we live.
In some establishments, 50% of caregivers are vaccinated, in others, only 19%, this is not tolerable.
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Where does this distrust come from?
It is paradoxical, the staff sometimes chose to shut themselves up with the residents during the first wave for fear that the virus will enter the nursing home and today they refuse the vaccine.
There is fear, generated by social networks and we prefer to note the slightest incident when 4 million have already received at least a first dose, it's incredible.
If we have a fever, we take paracetamol and it goes!
I repeat that we have hindsight.
The campaign started in December, it is March.
If the virus re-enters the establishments, could we blame the unvaccinated staff?
No, because it is very complicated to know the origin of a contamination and the virus is still circulating.
I especially do not want to go into a process of incrimination, that would be horrible.
However, I appeal to their responsibility.
While the health situation is deteriorating in France, the threat of confinement looms, loosening the noose in nursing homes risk creating confusion among the population?
This is why we are building this path of reunion by marking it out.
It will, of course, always be necessary to wear the mask.
And the protocol can be adapted from region to region depending on the epidemic situation.
But today, there is no longer any reason to prevent frail people from seeing their loved ones.
The nursing homes paid a heavy price during this crisis, some, because they were no longer allowed to go out, stopped eating, talking, they let themselves die.
Lifting this health shield is a fair return.
I have heard a lot of people in their 90s say to me, “I want to blow out my candles with my grandchildren, I cannot be forbidden”.
The residents are in accommodation, not in the hospital, it is too often forgotten.
Why wouldn't they belong to each other anymore?
I repeat, the elderly have rights.