Hundreds of thousands of French people took to the streets to protest against health passes

On the afternoon of August 7, according to statistics from the French Ministry of the Interior, about 237,000 French people took to the streets to protest in many major cities across France against the new health pass law. This was the fourth consecutive Saturday that the protest movement was carried out and attracted more and more participants, despite the adverse weather in many areas across France.

Compared to the protest a week earlier, the number of people taking to the streets on August 7 was over 30,000 more, and a notable detail is that the large protests are gradually shifting from the capital Paris to smaller cities in the provinces. On August 7, the largest protest was in Toulon, a city in the far south of France, with 19,000 participants. In the capital Paris, the number was around 17,000.

Although hopes of pressuring the French government and parliament to abandon the health pass law were dashed after France's Constitutional Council officially approved the law on August 5, protest leaders are turning their fight into calling on more workers in various sectors to strike and paralyze the economy.

This call is attracting many new participants, most notably restaurant, bar and commercial shop owners… who, by law, from Monday, August 9, will have to check customers’ health passes before serving them, or face heavy fines.

“It’s an ethical issue,” said the owner of a restaurant in Toulon. “As restaurant owners, it’s not our role to discriminate against customers, saying yes to one person or no to another based on people’s medical records, which we don’t look at at all.”

According to several local newspapers in France, more and more restaurant owners have closed their restaurants in protest against the health pass law. In addition, there have been several attacks on health facilities or vaccination centers in some localities, in protest of the regulation that requires health care workers to be vaccinated or have their contracts suspended.

However, government officials and many health experts in France still defend the government's decision to expand the health pass from August 9. From this point on, French people over the age of 18 will have to present a certificate of two doses of Covid-19 vaccine, or a negative test result within 48 hours, or an immunity certificate to enter restaurants, bars, shopping malls or cultural facilities.

The French government believes that this forced measure is necessary to prevent the fourth wave of Covid-19 in France caused by the Delta virus variant. Currently, the epidemic in France is deteriorating, with an average of about 25,000 - 27,000 new infections per day. The number of hospitalized patients as well as the number of severe cases or deaths is also starting to increase rapidly, raising concerns that hospitals will be overwhelmed again in 1-2 months.