The National Assembly adopts at first reading the extension of the health pass – archyde

At the end of often electric debates, the National Assembly gave, on the night of Wednesday 20 to Thursday 21 October, a first green light to the bill. “Health vigilance”, with the controversial possibility of using the health pass until July 31, 2022.

The bill was adopted with only 10 votes of difference, by 135 votes for and 125 against, after two days of debates regularly marked by passes of arms and invectives in the hemicycle, between the oppositions and the majority. The text will be examined in the Senate from October 28.

The government justified this request for an extension by the possibility of an epidemic rebound. “Some tremors are being felt locally on the territory, while the situation overseas remains worrying”, had underlined, Tuesday, the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, in front of the deputies.

Caught between the review of the state budget and that of Social Security, the bill was not adopted without difficulty. The majority narrowly avoided a resounding quack shortly before 10 p.m., when the vote was taken on article 2, the heart of the bill, with a ric-rac adoption by 74 votes in favor and 73 against.

Strong opposition left and right

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

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

Presented as a ” toolbox “, the bill proposes in particular to extend the use of the health pass and other measures to curb the epidemic until July 31, 2022. The state of health emergency in Guyana is, for its part, extended until December 31 2021.

While the uncertainty hovered over a hypothetical lifting of the pass in mid-November, the government spokesman, Gabriel Attal, had dampened the enthusiasms, Wednesday, at the end of the council of ministers. “Today, given the situation, I do not see how an adaptation could take place on November 15. “

The extension of the health pass for eight months, that is to say after the presidential election and the legislative elections, aroused strong opposition from both left and right.

Access to pupils’ vaccination status

As expected, the majority returned to the failure that occurred in the law committee, where the LRM 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. incidence of the epidemic.

LRM, Modem and Agir have restored the national logic, while taking into account several criteria that the “walkers” want to specify to justify the use of the pass: rate of vaccination, positivity of screening tests, incidence or saturation 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, to avoid class closures.

“You are opening an unthinkable breach in a secret [médical] which must be kept ‘, lambasted the deputy Les Républicains (LR) Philippe Gosselin, in unison with the other oppositions.