Masks and sanitiser as French kids go to school

Twelve million French children returned to school yesterday, wearing face masks, using sanitiser as they arrived and standing distanced from each other in schoolyards under strict rules aimed at curbing the spread of Covid-19.

President Emmanuel Macron, who visited a school in the southern port city of Marseille, urged pupils to respect the regulations, saying in a Twitter video that the government was “doing what is necessary to make ‘back to school’ as normal as possible”.

But that has still meant significant changes for the likes of Matthieu Seguin, deputy director of the Rodin high school in central Paris.

Air purifiers

“This is very different from usual,” he said, spelling out safety measures that also include air purifiers in classrooms and spare masks for any pupils that had forgotten theirs.

With inoculations now available to children from age 12, and pupils encouraged to get their shots, Seguin said his school might become a vaccination centre.

Macron said on Twitter that three of five teenagers had already received shots, and 11-year-old Rodin pupil Louise — who admitted to being a bit nervous for her first day at a big school — said she couldn’t wait to get hers too. “I really want to get vaccinated,” she said.