On July 12th France announced the latest measures to help combat a fourth wave of Covid-19, in an attempt to keep the country open and not risk a surge of the delta variant, such as the UK has seen. These measures are designed to avoid a fourth lockdown, and essentially make life normal for some, and very abnormal for others.
If you want to visit a bar, restaurant or hotel in France from August, you will need to present a negative covid-19 test, or a vaccination certificate. The test must be less than 48 hours old. This will be policed via a health pass, which is either via an app on your smart phone or the physical piece of paper you received with your most recent test or vaccination.
DOES THIS EFFECT MY HOLIDAY?
For those travelling to France, a vaccination certificate is required for non-essential travel anyway, so in effect this does not change very much at all. Unless France and the UK were to put each other on the green list, which seems unlikely in the short term, you would need to be vaccinated to travel to the continent.
So if you are jabbed, very little will change. You will need to present your certificate or app on entry to each establishment you visit, something that sounds annoying at first but will no doubt become second nature in the weeks and months to come.
WILL THE NHS APP WORK IN FRANCE?
Yes. The NHS app works via QR codes, and the QR code can be read by the French equivalent app. The point of the EU wide health passport scheme was to allow each app to work in each country, though the UK has left the EU it is still part of this system and is accepted across Europe.
You do not need to download the French app. However, it is easy to use, free and you can upload your vaccine certificate to it, so the choice is yours. If you wish to do so, here is the LINK.
WHAT IF I DON'T HAVE A SMART PHONE, OR I AM OUT OF BATTERY?
If you've managed to get yourself to Europe, you've probably got a smart phone, if you don't or your phone is out of battery, or the vaccine certificate can't be uploaded then you'll need to carry a copy of your physical certificate.
It's an extremely good idea to have multiple copies of this, possibly laminated so you do not need one copy every time you leave the house incase it gets damaged or lost.
Simplest solution, have it on your phone.
