PARIS (Reuters) – French Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Thursday that making vaccination compulsory to rein in the new coronavirus would not be very helpful, as that move would bring more problems than solutions.
“We already have some difficulties to control the health pass compliance. Those difficulties would be even bigger if we made vaccination compulsory,” Castex told BFM TV and RMC Radio.
On Wednesday, France registered a record of more than 332,252 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, and a further 246 COVID deaths in hospitals.
Italy on Wednesday made COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for people from the age of 50, one of very few European countries to take a similar steps, in an attempt to ease pressure on its health service and reduce fatalities.
(Reporting by Benoit Van Overstraeten; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)
