The contraversial health pass, which is now required for eating out, travelling by train or visiting a hospital, became part of French people's daily lives on Monday. However doubts remain about its use by individuals or the constraints it generates for certain professionals.
For the health pass to be valid, it must testify either to a complete vaccination, or to the patient's recovery through a positive test certificate of at least 11 days and less than 6 months, or finally to a negative test dating "less than 72 hours".
The pass has also been applied to some shopping centres of more than 20,000m² including five centres in the Nantes area in Western France. Three centres in the southern city of Perpignan will be affected from this Wednesday.
In Paris, Les Galeries Lafayette also introduced the health pass on Monday, although no prefectoral decision has yet been published for Parisian shopping centres.
A poster at the entrances explains that "by prefectural decision, the presentation of the health pass is mandatory to access the shop," but the department stores' did not provide any explanation.
By lunchtime on Monday, on the Avenue du Prado in Marseille, "there are no crowds", observed the owner of the O'Prado brasserie, Michaël Esterle, who said he had turned away "half of the customers" without a pass during the morning.
Meanwhile In Bordeaux, Hadrien Garcia, manager of the café-brasserie "L'intendance" said he was afraid of overflowing. "It's clearly restrictive, it lengthens our order-taking process and we quickly find ourselves overwhelmed," he said.
A quarter of trains checked on Monday
The pass has also been made compulsory for long-distance transport, but controls are not systematic: On Monday, "a quarter of the trains" were to be controlled, according to the minister delegated to Transport Jean-Baptiste Djebbari.
Only a few major stations carried out platform checks, such as in Paris.
By mid-morning at Montparnasse railway station SNCF staff met passengers and offered to check their passes, without forcing them, to give them a blue paper bracelet.
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QR code and doubts
Across France, questions remain about the health pass' credentials.
One example was that although passengers were generally prepared for travel, an elderly woman, with her vaccination certificate in her pocket, doubted whether that would be acceptable, because she didn't have a smartphone with the TousAntiCovid app on her.
The law does allow for paper proof of vaccination, but only certificates with a QR code provided by health professionals at the time of vaccination or test are accepted.
A document from a pharmacy or laboratory indicating a negative result, if it does not have a QR code, is not enough.
#COVID19 La CNIL rend son avis sur plusieurs décrets d’application concernant le #PassSanitaire, le fichier recensant les résultats des tests et l’accès aux données de vaccination des professionnels soumis à une obligation vaccinale 👉 https://t.co/nOehb7XuYX pic.twitter.com/CtNWZqbXcW
— CNIL (@CNIL) August 9, 2021
Data protection watchdog calls for alternatives
The French National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties (Cnil) has asked the government to investigate the use of "alternative" reading devices of the health pass.
The health pass and its associated QR code, contains information on the vaccination or immunity status of its holder as well as his or her identity.
In concrete terms, TousAntiCovid Verif makes it possible to find out whether the pass is valid or invalid and to know the customer's surname, first name and date of birth, without disclosing any further health information on the screen.
However, one of the decrees on tackling the crisis states that any other device for reading TousAntiCovid Verif "meeting the conditions set by an order of the ministers in charge of health and digital" is also allowed.
Cnil have requested the French government should ensure that alternative reading devices to the TousAntiCovid Verif app meet the specific conditions set before they can be used by actors who have to check the health pass.
It also called for additional guarantees to ensure the transparency of the system, by publishing a list of compliant reading applications and the source code of the devices.
