The National Assembly gives the green light to extend the health pass until summer 2022

Published on : 10/21/2021 – 02:53

At the end of the electrical debates, the Assembly gave, on the night of Wednesday 20 to Thursday 21 October, a first green light to the bill “health vigilance” which provides for the extension of the transitional period of exit from the state of health emergency and the extension of the use of the health pass until July 31, 2022. This is the third text addressing the issue in five months.

Stuck between the examination of the state budget and that of Social Security, it was adopted by only 10 votes of difference, 135 votes for and 125 against after two days of debates regularly marked by passes of arms and invectives in the hemicycle. The text will land in the Senate on October 28.

The majority, however, narrowly avoided a resounding quack shortly before 10 p.m., when the vote on article 2, the heart of the bill, was adopted by 74 votes in favor and 73 against.

The occasional problems of mobilization in the hemicycle among LREM (La République en Marche) deputies pointed out on Tuesday morning in a group meeting by Christophe Castaner, leader of the “marchers”, have obviously not been resolved .

“With one voice, the marchers who do not walk as surely as yesterday have almost come up against the wall of protest against the opposition,” thundered the Communist Sébastien Jumel. “Your drift on the sanitary pass does not pass!”

Opposition against government management of the crisis

Presented as a “toolbox”, the bill proposes to extend the use of the health pass and a whole battery of measures to curb the epidemic within the framework of a post-crisis regime until July 31, 2022. L he state of health emergency in Guyana is extended until December 31, 2021.

If there is “no epidemic wave” today in France, the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran underlined the situation abroad: “in Belgium, it rises strongly, in the Netherlands it rises strong (…) The epidemic is not over. “

While uncertainty hovered over a hypothetical lifting of the pass in mid-November, government spokesman Gabriel Attal dampened enthusiasm on Wednesday after the Council of Ministers. “Today, given the situation, I do not see how an adaptation could take place on November 15th.”

The extension of the health pass for eight months, by the hand of the executive, by “spanning” the presidential and legislative elections, is in any case howling the oppositions on the right and on the left. They denounce the situation in the Overseas Territories, the age measures on the sanitary pass, the end of free tests, the state of emergency deemed to be liberticidal, the suspension of caregivers, the change of foot of the majority on the scope of application of the pass before and after July 12 …

The vaccination status of students accessible

As expected, the majority returned to the quack that arose in the law committee where the LREM deputy Pacôme Rupin, resolute opponent to the pass, had narrowly passed an amendment which provides for limiting the use of the pass geographically and according to the rate of incidence of the epidemic.

LREM, Modem and Agir have decided to favor the national logic of the health pass, while taking into account several criteria that the “walkers” want to specify to justify its use: rate of vaccination, positivity of screening tests, incidence or saturation of intensive care beds – with levels to be defined.

The Assembly also adopted a government amendment concerning knowledge of the vaccination status of pupils by school directors or secondary school principals.

The measure aims to “facilitate the organization of screening and vaccination campaigns and organize teaching conditions to prevent the risk of spreading the virus” and therefore ultimately class closures.

“You are opening an unthinkable breach in a secret (medical at school, Editor’s note) which must be kept,” blasted the Republican (LR) Philippe Gosselin in unison with the other oppositions.

With AFP