As France Enters Fourth COVID Wave, the Country Is Pulled in Two Directions

There were over 200,000 demonstrations across France on Sunday, Aug. 1, according to press accounts, calling for “Liberté” against the government’s plan for a “green health pass.” France is entering its fourth COVID wave, with new cases per day rising over 10 times in the last month, from 2,000 to 21,300. A leader of the hospital workers union stated that a health pass will not be enough to curb another wave of COVID-19, and urged the government to make vaccination compulsory for everyone. “We no longer have the luxury of taking half-measures,” Frédéric Valletoux, the head of the Hospital Federation of France (FHF) and the mayor of Fontainebleau, told Le Journal du Dimanche weekly newspaper today. “Everywhere, the indicators are going up again. The context of the epidemic shows us the limits of intermediate measures.” He said the government should “assume the course of compulsory [measures] along with voluntary [ones].” He further declared that the recently introduced pass had “worked in the short term, but will not be enough to achieve real collective immunity.”