Less than a hundred days now separate Emmanuel Macron from the presidential election where he should, barring an accident, play his re-election at the head of the country. However, the election has never seemed so far from the concerns of the French, obsessed with the fifth wave of Covid-19 started with the Delta variant and then amplified by the « lame de fond » Omicron. At the beginning of January, the President of the Republic therefore has no choice but to hide his political ambitions in order to devote himself fully to the management of a crisis where any misstep might be fatal.
Monday January 3, a “Monitoring unit”, was set up in Matignon bringing together around the Prime Minister, Jean Castex, a dozen ministers, including Bruno Le Maire (economy), Jean-Michel Blanquer (national education), Jean-Baptiste Djebbari (transport) or Florence Parly (armed forces) . Olivier Véran (health), busy in the National Assembly to defend the vaccine pass, was represented by his chief of staff, as was Gérald Darmanin (inside) traveling abroad. The stake of the device: to show that the executive is in the process of allowing the country to “Keep turning”, despite levels of contamination that explode all records.
With more than 200,000 daily cases of Covid-19, the aim is to ensure that no strategic public service is threatened with paralysis due to absenteeism linked to the virus. In the event of tension, the executive intends to adopt the necessary corrective actions as quickly as possible (recruitments, appeal for the use of retired staff, etc.). After the announcement of the evolution of isolation rules to allow contact cases and infected and vaccinated people, employees of strategic sectors, to resume work more quickly, this meeting which will be followed by another, on the same format, Thursday January 6, and should become weekly, confirms the choice of the executive: to live with Omicron, even if it means letting it spread. “We must ensure that we continue to live, despite the virus”, attests Thomas Mesnier deputy La République en Marche (LRM) of Charente.
Vaccination remains the trump card
If the contagiousness of Omicron panics, its lesser virulence suggests that such an option has become possible. But this choice fully assumed at the top of the State is also guided by a guideline: in a France exhausted by nearly two years of pandemic, the executive is determined to avoid all restrictive measures “in the old way”, in particular the school closures, curfews and, most importantly, confinement. “A year ago, Emmanuel Macron made the political choice to refuse confinement once morest the advice of scientists. To confine today would be to take the risk of letting it be said that it was a mistake. A few months before the presidential election, he cannot afford it “, observes the political scientist Bruno Cautrès, researcher at the CNRS and member of Cevipof.
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