“The fourth wave, here we are.“Guest of the newspaper of 13 hours of TF1 this July 21, Prime Minister Jean Castex alerted to the epidemic situation in France, revealing that the number of contaminations had jumped by 140% in one week.

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Five million new appointments

To cope with this outbreak, the executive is relying on a new push on the vaccination campaign, especially as 96% of the 18,000 people identified as positive for covid on July 20 were not vaccinated.

The head of government has therefore announced the opening of five million new vaccination slots in the next two weeks. In this interval, the target is eight million additional first-time recipients.

Target 50 million first-time vaccines

Ahead of the market set in June, namely the goal of 40 million people who received at least one dose at the end of August, Jean Castex raised the bar to 50 million at the same time.

“It’s a very ambitious goal, but it also shows that we will have understood the gravity of the situation.“, pleaded the Prime Minister.

No health pass at school

Regarding the health pass, the first extension of which to places of culture and leisure comes into force today, the Prime Minister announced that it will not be required “in schools”.

“Our entire strategy since the start of the crisis (…) has consisted in ensuring that the children of France are educated as much as possible. (…) So we are not going to say now, if you are not vaccinated, especially since some can not do anything about it, we will deprive you of school. So no health pass in schools“, detailed Jean Castex.

Vaccinate in middle and high schools

On the other hand, the executive intends to accelerate the vaccination campaign for 12-17 year olds. As such, the Prime Minister underlined that “devices to go to“will be deployed in middle and high schools at the start of the September school year to promote”indoor vaccination“.

A week of tolerance before the sanctions

More generally, the head of government provided details on this health pass, in particular on the fact that the heads of establishments who will have to control the health passes at the entrance will not be responsible for the “identity verification“of the people who present them.

Finally a tolerance of “one week“will be granted to make”pedagogy“after the entry into force of the extended health pass,”time for sanctions“coming only after.