Anti-health pass protests continue in France amid 4th wave of COVID-19

PARIS - Tens of thousands of protestors turned out on Saturday in French cities for the third weekend of the action in a row to oppose anti-coronavirus rules as lawmakers are due to approve this weekend on a law aimed at setting up a health pass and mandatory vaccination for medical staff in a move to handle the fourth wave of the pandemic.

Some 161,000 people took part in the demonstrations in France, according to the estimation of the Interior Ministry. The figure is up from last week's 114,000. In Paris, Saturday's protests have lured 11,000 people, compared with 17,000 last week.

Marches across French cities were relatively calm. But in the capital, tension flared near Saint-Lazare railway station and in the Champs Elysees Avenue where police fired tear gas to push back demonstrators who threw projectiles at them.

In a Twitter message, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin strongly condemned "the violent behavior which targeted certain police officers, gendarmes and journalists."

Nine people were arrested in Paris, he added.

The government drafted a bill that will make vaccination of health workers and firefighters mandatory. In addition, only people who have completed their vaccination, have the negative test or recently recovered from COVID-19 will be allowed, starting from early August, to enter restaurants and cafes, go to shopping centers, gyms and even hospitals except for emergencies.

The authorities argued that the new rules are needed to contain the highly-transmissible Delta variant, first detected in India, and to avoid a new nationwide lockdown. But critics say the measures obstructed people's freedom and discriminated against those who refuse to receive COVID-19 vaccine.

"What is a health pass? It is an incentive to vaccinate, it is the way to keep open as much as possible places that could have been closed if the pandemic flares up such as restaurants," Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Wednesday.

"We must give ourselves the means to control this pandemic outbreak...The contagiousness of (Delta) variant forces us even more to be vaccinated," he added.

To date, some 33.15 million people are fully inoculated, nearly half of the country's 67 million inhabitants, according to Health Ministry's figures.

The French government aims to administer 50 million first shots and have 35 million people fully vaccinated by the end of August.

On Saturday, 25,624 more people tested positive for COVID-19, the highest daily count since May 5. The cumulative number of coronavirus cases now totals 5.98 million, among them 111,609 patients lost their lives.

Currently, 6,787 people are receiving treatment in hospitals. Meanwhile, the number of critically-ill patients in intensive care increased for the third straight day to stand at 878.

Jean-Francois Delfraissy, head of the scientific council that advises the government on coronavirus, expected the number of new daily infections to reach around 50,000 by the beginning of August, and that the fourth pandemic wave would affect French hospitals in the second half of next month.

"The return to normal is not for now, probably in 2022 or 2023. We will probably have another variant which will emerge in the winter. This virus has extraordinary mutation capacity," Delfraissy said in a recent TV interview.