PARIS: Now necessary for lunch at a restaurant, travel by train or a visit to the hospital, the health pass entered the daily life of the French on Monday, without removing all doubts about its use by individuals or the constraints that it generates in some professionals.
To be valid, this pass must demonstrate either a complete vaccination schedule, or the patient’s recovery through a positive test certificate of at least 11 days and less than 6 months, or finally a negative test dating from “less than 72 hours”.
The health pass has also started to be applied in a few shopping centers of more than 20,000 square meters, by decision of the prefect, including five centers in the Nantes conurbation. Three centers in Perpignan will be affected from Wednesday.
In Paris, Galeries Lafayette also introduced the health pass on Monday, although no prefectural decision has yet been published for Parisian shopping centers. A poster at the entrances explains that “by prefectural decision, the presentation of the health pass is compulsory to access the store”. Contacted, the department store did not provide an explanation.
“Clearly binding” in restaurants
At the time of the lunch break on Monday, on Avenue du Prado in Marseille, “there are no crowds”, observes the boss of the O’Prado brewery, Michaël Esterle, who indicates having refused “half customers “without pass, during the morning.
In Bordeaux, Hadrien Garcia, manager of the café brasserie “Intendance” on the course of the same name, fears the overflow. “It is clearly restrictive, it lengthens our order taking process and we quickly find ourselves overwhelmed”.
Place Saint-Pierre in Toulouse, the manager of the popular bars Chez Tonton and La Couleur de la Culotte hired an additional employee to control the sanitary pass. “Lunchtime is manageable, but in the evening the servers don’t have time”, explains the woman who is nicknamed “Mamie Françoise”.
A quarter of the trains checked on Monday
The pass is also compulsory for long-distance transport, but its control is not systematic: Monday, “a quarter of the trains” were to be checked, according to the Minister for Transport Jean-Baptiste Djebbari.
Only a few large stations operate platform controls, as in Paris. In Montparnasse in the middle of the morning, SNCF staff in blue vests went to meet passengers by offering them – without forcing them – to check their pass, to give them a blue paper bracelet.
A QR Code and doubts
Across France, the same questions were asked about the supporting documents accepted.
In Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne for example, the passengers were generally prepared, but an elderly lady, vaccination certificates in her pocket, doubted that she was in order, for lack of a smartphone with the TousAntiCovid app on her.
Everything was fine for her: the law allows paper supporting documents, but be careful, only certificates with a QR Code generally provided by health professionals at the time of the vaccination or the test are accepted – a paper from the pharmacy or the laboratory indicating a negative result, if it does not have a QR code, is not sufficient.
This official proof can always be downloaded from the Health Insurance website or that of the Ministry of Health (Si-Dep) and printed or integrated into the TousAntiCovid app. The Si-Dep platform was however briefly unavailable on Monday evening.
More than the pass itself, it is to recover this QR code which poses a problem for Christiane, leaving from Paris-Montparnasse: “I am an Amish, not at all digital, it is really complicated”.
For restaurateurs, in Bordeaux, “it is sometimes a little complicated, especially for foreigners who often only have a certificate on paper without a QR code, but we take them all the same”, declares Bernadette Ramos, head waiter. the popular Entrecôte restaurant in the city center.
A little tension in the hospital
In front of the Georges Pompidou European Hospital in Paris, an altercation occurs between a visitor and the sanitary pass controllers.
“It disgusts me, I would be ashamed in your place!”, Shouts through the security barriers Bernard François, a septuagenarian who was unable to accompany his wife Nicole, who was ill with cancer, for lack of a health pass to his scanner.
The health pass is not necessary to access emergency care.
Crowded pharmacies
To show white paw, unvaccinated people lined up in front of pharmacies on Monday. In front of that of the Le Colombia shopping center, in the heart of Rennes, a long queue passed the entrance doors and many people were waiting in the Breton drizzle.
In Lille, Olga, a 19-year-old student, awaits the result of her antigen test. “For young people, the vaccination was opened late, so I did not have time and now, I am taking lessons, it spoils my vacation a bit”, regrets the young woman.
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