The French parliament is to vote on the government’s post-lockdown plan as a single package. That means there will be no separate vote on the controversial tracking app that critics say will mean more digital surveillance of our lives.
MPs are to vote on the plan tomorrow after it has been presented by Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. It will then be presented to local council representatives, unions and employers the following day.
The hasty vote has come under fire from France Insoumise leader Jean-Muc Mélenchon on the left and Républicains leader Damien Abad on the right.
Even some of members of the ruling party are said to be unhappy that there will be no separate debate on the proposed StopCovid app, as they had been given to understand there would be.
Downloading the app, which will track you to see if you have been in contact with an infected person, will be voluntary and anonymous.
Some scientists argue that traditional practices can’t cope with Covid-19 and that immediate tracing of contacts is needed to combat the hyperinfectious virus.
Similar tools have been used in some Asian countries. South Korea was able to avoid lockdown at the cost of only 243 lives so far in part thanks to a similar app, although that was combined with far more extensive testing than what is on offer in France.
Critics warn that it could lead to yet more digital snooping than we already have, with data possibly exploited by the state for other purposes, such as limiting immigration, or by private companies, as happened in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The French government has already accessed mobile phone data to estimate how many people fled to their holiday homes before lockdown and several European countries, including Italy and Austria, have used digital tracking to help enforce their lockdowns.
That hasn’t stopped some commentators posing the question as a difference between Asian and European attitudes to individual liberties, as they have also suggested that Asians’ readiness to wear masks is “cultural”, rather than a result of their recent experience of epidemics and stifling levels of pollution.
As from today we can buy masks in French pharmacies, if we can overcome our cultural misgivings, which I suspect most of us will.
Another day, another study. This time researchers bring the cheery news that fewer lives are saved in intensive care than French officials have implied.
Health boss Jérôme Salomon previously announced that 10% of Covid-19 patients admitted to intensive care died. Researchers at Reva, a European artificial ventilation network, say that the real figure is now 30-40%.
On the bright side, a study in New South Wales appears to show that kids aren’t as toxic as we feared. Commissioned to prepare for the reopening of schools, it found that no teachers in the state had been infected by their pupils and that half of all cases identified were teachers.
France’s Covid-19 death toll officially stands at 22,856, 252 in the last 24 hours. 28,217 patients are in hospital, down just five yesterday, and 4,682 are in intensive care, down 43. 44,903 people have been discharged from hospital, 309 yesterday.
