The epidemic outbreak in France is accompanied by an Omicron breakthrough.
About 20% of positive cases for Covid-19 now fall within the highly contagious variant Omicron, which represented 10% of contaminations at the weekend, government spokesman Gabriel Attal announced on Tuesday evening.
“At the national level, the updated estimate this evening of the circulation of the Omicron variant shows 20% of the positive cases which would come under (this) variant. The estimate which had been made at the end of the week showed a circulation of 10% in our country ”, declared Mr. Attal, after a consultation of the parliamentary groups by Jean Castex.
"This increase seems to be driven by a very strong increase in contaminations among young people, especially 20-40 years", he said, inviting them to reduce "to the maximum (the) contacts", to test themselves at “the slightest doubt”, and if the test is positive, to isolate themselves “even more scrupulously” because of the greater contagiousness of the variant. Nearly 73,000 positive cases were detected on Monday, "which corresponds to an increase of around 15% compared to the previous Monday," said Attal.
🏥Development in one week (on December 21):
• daily hospitalizations: + 5%
• daily critical care admissions: =
• hospitalized patients: + 9%
• critical care patients: + 11%
• daily hospital deaths: + 19% # Covid19 pic.twitter.com/28bIJbZa3N
- Nicolas Berrod (@nicolasberrod) December 21, 2021
No consensus on a health pass for companies
The government representative reported that there was "no consensus" around the idea of including a health pass for businesses in the vaccination pass, "in particular for reasons of operational feasibility".
But "the discussions could potentially continue among the parliamentary groups of the majority, of the opposition, between now and the examination of the text", he added.
The government will not include a health pass for businesses in its vaccine pass bill, but will eventually let parliamentarians table an amendment to this effect, AFP learned from parliamentary sources on Tuesday.
According to UDI deputy Jean-Christophe Lagarde, the bill could be discussed in the hemicycle "on January 3".
The spokesperson spoke of "very broad support" for two measures on "the increase in controls and penalties for false health passes, and the transformation of the health pass into a vaccination pass", which however oppose LFI and the RN.
Mr. Attal also spoke of a "consensus" on "the possible need to have to take other measures when we see in our country a significant deterioration of the health situation".
