France: relaxation of the company health protocol

Since it can be observed that ‘the health situation is improving significantly’, it is possible ‘to envisage a further easing of activity-related health conditions’ outlined the new protocol published on 24 June (for details of the earlier protocol c.f. article No. 11906). The new protocol provides that except for persons at serious risk of SARS-CoV-2, ‘teleworking is no longer the norm, but remains a solution that is to be favored in the context of a gradual return to physical face-to-face activities, including vocational-educational alternating work’. It also provides for the appointment of a COVID-19 contact person in all companies, irrespective of size, and it relaxes the spatial rule of four square meters per employee.
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Latest protocol’s main new features. In order to facilitate the gradual end of teleworking, which until now has been the recommendation, the new national protocol asks employers to define the number of people who can be simultaneously physically present in the same space (employees, customers…), but it no longer strictly imposes, since it is only an indicative benchmark, the previous four-square-meter minimum spatial requirement per person (at least one meter around each person in all direction

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