France tightens Covid restrictions to tackle Omicron surge

France will make remote working mandatory for three days a week and limit the size of indoor events

France will make working from home mandatory for at least three days a week, and will ban large indoor gatherings of more than 2,000 people, in an effort to tackle the Omicron variant of Covid.

French prime minister Jean Castex has also promised a law to convert the existing “health pass” into a “vaccine pass”, which will be used to control access to bars, restaurants and other public places.

The legislation would make vaccination almost mandatory, and people would no longer be allowed access to venues with just a negative Covid test.

However, the government has not outlined plans to introduce further measures, such as a delay in the return to school after Christmas.

Castex said “We are in a race against the clock,” adding that the government was seeking to introduce “proportionate” measures.

He said: “Even if we do not yet see hospitals as overloaded by Omicron, the contagiousness of the variant and the speed at which it is spreading require us to go further.”

In a separate announcement on Tuesday, Castex said intensive care nurses would receive an extra €100 (£84) per month from January, as the country seeks to improve working conditions for staff exhausted by the fight against Covid.

The bonus comes ahead of a broader set of measures that will be unveiled next week by health minister Olivier Veran, aimed at stemming shortages of staff on the front line of the Covid response.

France is among a number of European countries to have recently introduced harsher restrictions to curb a new wave of Covid infections triggered by the Omicron variant.

The country reported a record number of cases on Christmas Day, with almost 105,000 new infections.

Rather than imposing harsh restrictions on businesses, Emmanuel Macron’s government has advocated a faster booster vaccine rollout along with measures such as making it mandatory to work from home.

Castex said the government’s new working from home measures would last for at least three weeks, and would apply to around four out of 10 people – those whose roles can be performed remotely.

The country will also ban food and drink consumption in cinemas, and on long-distance transport, to minimise the removal of masks. Bars and restaurants will also be required to provide table service.

However, Jean-Paul Stahl, an infectious disease specialist at a Grenoble hospital, said the measures did not go far enough: “The health system has lost out in the arbitrage with the economy today,” he said.

Several other European nations, including Denmark, Finland, Germany and Greece, have announced new restrictions in recent days, mainly relating to opening times for bars and restaurants and limits on the size of gatherings over the holidays.