France introduces sanitary passes for visiting public places

Eat a fresh croissant for breakfast in a cafe under the window, go shopping or take the train to the village to see grandma – in France, all this is now needed sanitary pass. It contains information about a citizen’s vaccination, a negative result of his PCR test done in no more than 72 hours, or about a recently transferred COVID-19. The pass is a rather general name, in fact, it can serve as a nationwide QR code that gives the necessary data in a special application, as well as paper certificates of tests, vaccinations or recovery.

From Monday, a sanitary pass is needed to visit all catering points (including on terraces), shops and shopping centers with an area of more than 20 thousand square meters, cinemas, theater and concert halls, as well as many other public places. Without a pass, you can no longer make long trips within the country by train, plane or interregional buses.

In addition, only with him can you go to the hospital for planned treatment or visit sick loved ones. Wherever a pass is required, it is permitted to wear protective masks at will, although it is reserved for the heads of institutions to make this mandatory. According to French Transport Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, the innovations should help encourage as many residents of the Fifth Republic as possible to get vaccinated. Society in France was divided into two camps: agreeing and dissenting. “Three lockdowns are already too much. We have lost some freedoms, and this (the introduction of sanitary passes. – approx.” RG “) will allow us to regain some of them,” a visitor to one cafe in the city of Aix-en- Provence. “All this is in the smartphone, it only takes two seconds to check,” another man said.

But not everyone found the passes so “harmless”. “Yes, a great idea: to be alone in the hospital, because loved ones do not have or do not want to have this pass,” – Pauline Challande lamented on Facebook. In a video on her Instagram account, the woman says that after the introduction of the new rules, she can no longer visit her dying daughter in the hospital. “A pass is the freedom to infect whoever you want, where you want, as you want, because your QR code works,” a user under the nickname Nigaud LOTO wrote on Twitter.

Not everyone in France found passes convenient and “harmless”

Quite a few Frenchmen also thought about how much money would be spent on monitoring the implementation of the new rules. “Shame on the cops who will keep an eye on honest Frenchmen while there is a lot to do with the rabble,” Twitter user la picarde gauloise wrote. “There is no money to heal, but there is money to control the French,” says Elisabeth Pyrsz on Facebook.