France demands masks for 11- to 6-year-olds

Paris, Jan. 2 (BNA): French authorities announced, Saturday, that children aged six years and over will have to wear masks in indoor spaces open to the public as new cases of the highly contagious omicron variant exceeded 200,000 for the fourth day in a row. The Press (AP) reported.

By lowering the age of children required to wear masks from 11 to 6, the government hopes to avoid post-holiday school closures. Classes resume on Monday and young children will have to wear masks on public transport, sports complexes and places of worship. The mask mandate extends to outdoor spaces in cities such as Paris and Lyon that have recently reintroduced the outdoor-wearing mask.

On the first day of the new year, France recorded 2,19,126 new infections, just slightly down from the daily record of 232,200 set on the last day of 2021.

The French government is betting that the fifth wave of the pandemic led by the rapidly spreading omicron variant can be tamed without a return to economically devastating lockdowns or curfews and without hospitals collapsing with ever-increasing numbers of severely ill.

France has lost 123,000 people to COVID-19.

AOQ