It was believed to be defeated, specific to the old world, erased by the Covid-19 pandemic.
But it would be bad to know her.
The kiss, this traditional French and European greeting, has not said its last word.
According to an Ifop * study published Friday, October 15, 65% of French people practice it with their relatives, friends or colleagues.
It is still 16 points less than before the first confinement in March 2020 (91%), but already much more than in March 2021, when only 39% of respondents admitted to continuing to kiss their loved ones.
If the practice of kissing with strangers is less widespread - 23% of respondents still practice it today - it has also doubled compared to last March (9%).
Did you think the wind was gone?
Beware, she is coming back slowly but surely.
% of French people practicing it:
Before the Covid 91%
During 39%
Today 65%
Poll @IfopOpinion by @francois_kraus pic.twitter.com/yXfl67cJGx
- Paul Cébille (@Ellibec) October 16, 2021
Eighteen months after being banned from social habits due to health restrictions, the handshake also seems to have been reinstated by the French in their rites of greetings.
59% do this with people they know, three times more than six months ago (22%).
A clear relaxation of the French in terms of hygiene
If they were all the same more numerous to tighten the clamp before the pandemic (85%), this return in force of the traditional greetings seems “very symptomatic of a certain indifference to the discourse of health prevention, undoubtedly because the washing hands are no longer the only means of protection available to people, ”notes Ifop.
Because in general, a clear relaxation of the French in terms of hygiene compared to the first confinement is observed by the polling institute.
Respondents are thus significantly less likely to wash their hands systematically when returning home (55%, compared to 86% in March 2020), before going to dinner (58%, compared to 81% in March 2020) or after taking the public transport: 65% today, compared to 70% in March 2020.
“In countries like France where bad hygiene habits seem deeply rooted in the cultural“ habitus ”of the population, hammer home the idea that hand washing is essential to prevent the transmission of winter viral infections therefore remains an issue for the authorities to take up, ”concludes François Kraus, director of the political and current affairs department of Ifop.
The threat of winter viruses looms
A sizeable stake, while bronchiolitis is already saturating pediatric resuscitations in Île-de-France, and scientists fear that the French will suffer from a greater sensitivity to infections after a white season marked, among other things, by the absence of seasonal flu.
Faced with this risk of a double influenza-Covid epidemic, the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, thus affirmed last Wednesday that "10 million doses" of influenza vaccine would be available from the first day of the vaccination campaign, on the 26th. October.
That is 6 million more doses compared to last year.
*:
Ifop study for XLoveCam carried out by self-administered online questionnaire from July 7 to 8, 2021 among 5,039 people aged 18 and over, made up of a representative sample of the Italian, Spanish, French, German and British populations
