Olivier Véran provides details.
Traveling to Nice this Thursday, the Minister of Health announced a threshold to be able to do without the mask.
It may fall indoors in places not subject to the pass (businesses, schools, transport) when the stage of 1,500 patients in critical care is crossed, reveals France Bleu.
On Wednesday, he had advanced the date to mid-March.
The critical care services, which receive the most serious cases, had 3,126 Covid patients on Wednesday (including 207 admissions), against 3,235 the day before (291 admissions) and 3,503 the previous Wednesday.
So double Olivier Véran's goal.
But those numbers, like others, are falling.
The total number of hospitalized patients reached 30,578 against 31,091 on Tuesday and 32,878 people last Wednesday.
The number of new admissions (1,975) is also down compared to the previous day (2,454), or compared to that of Wednesday of the previous week (2,614).
These good indicators are pushing the government to loosen the reins.
Almost all of the health restrictions still in force in France could be lifted within a few weeks, if the improvement on the front of the Covid epidemic is confirmed.
End of the pass envisaged in mid-March
A first schedule has been unveiled.
From February 28, the mask will no longer be compulsory in closed places subject to the vaccination pass, except for transport.
The rules will also be relaxed for the tests: from February 28, contact case students will no longer have to do three but only one after two days.
This relaxation will concern all contact cases in the population.
Olivier Véran envisaged Wednesday on France Info the end of the wearing of the mask indoors for adults and children “in mid-March”, as well as a reduction in the vaccination pass on this date, if the circulation of the virus is “very weak ".
Read also“Raise the vaccine pass at the end of March seems possible to me”, assures Jean-François Delfraissy
The minister mentioned the prospect of “keeping (the mask) in places which are very at risk, such as nightclubs, and there it would be until the end of March, the beginning of April”.
“We can start to greatly lighten the vaccine pass device, perhaps not all in one block, perhaps we will keep measures for the end of March at the beginning of April”, he continued.
