As Monaco prepares to provide a hundred doses of paediatric strength Covid vaccine to fragile children aged five to 11, France has approved distribution for all kids in this age group.
Monaco’s Minister of State Pierre Dartout made the announcement during a press conference on Monday, revealing that the Monegasque National Vaccination Committee has been given the green light to inoculate the Principality’s vulnerable children aged five to 11 against Covid.
Authorities have already received a hundred doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech jab, specially formulated for children, and will be offering appointments at the Princess Grace Hospital as opposed to the national vaccination centre in the Rainier III Auditorium.
France, meanwhile, has gone one step further, announcing on Monday that all children in this age group are now eligible for the paediatric strength vaccine.
Last week, France started vaccinating five to 11-year-olds with medical conditions that require special protection and ramped up logistics to roll out vaccination of all children in this age group once the country’s health regulator, Haute Autorite de Sante (HAS), approved the move.
Monaco’s Director of Health Action, Dr. Alexandre Bordero, told reporters on Monday that the Principality is still considering this option.
“Before making a final decision for the other children, it will be necessary to consult the vaccination committee again. The committee is likely to meet in early January. The question will then be asked whether or not it is appropriate to vaccinate all children aged five to 11 years and under what modalities. For the moment, it is not yet fixed.”
The last legislative session of 2021 was opened with the amendment to the Financial Activities Act of 2007, with a heavy focus on crypto currencies and for the Financial Activities Control Commission to gain membership to the International Organisation of Securities Commissions.
Crypto currencies are the wave of the future according to many and Monaco is certainly open to riding that wave, but with provisions to ensure legality in all arenas.
This is what came from the National Council’s last meeting of the year where amendments to the financial activities law was top on the agenda.
The CCAF has been an associate member since January 2018 and allows for it to make bilateral agreements, as a tool to help Monaco secure its place as an international financial hub.
According to Badi, the text is organised along two axes. The first is the expansion of the CCAF’s missions in terms of controls and investigations, and the other is the creation of certain criminal sanctions and the insertion of a section devoted to insider trading and market manipulation.
Several elected officials would have liked to take advantage of this bill. This would be advantageous “to complete the Monegasque legislative framework in terms of digital assets and crypto-assets,” said Franck Julien, Chairman of the Digital Development Commission.
The government took this into consideration but decided to make it a stand-alone bill. Julien, nonetheless, made a detailed presentation on the subject by describing what is going on internationally, explaining the proportion taken up by crypto coins in the wallets of the wealthy as well as the variety of cryptocurrencies on the market.
While stressing that Monaco clearly must take a stand against money laundering and conceded the risks of people using crypto-currencies for money laundering, he still believed that, “Monaco must position itself in the promising world of crypto-money. Bill 1035 could have been more attractive by demonstrating the Principality’s desire to join the concert of nations fighting against money laundering through the fraudulent use of crypto-currencies.” He therefore announced that he would not vote for Bill 1035.
With 89 approved establishments and €129 billion in deposits and securities, Minister of Finance and the Economy Jean Castellini wanted to make clear the importance of the proposed bill and asked for “the tabling in the first quarter of next year of a bill establishing service providers on digital assets and establishing a system of specific authorisation.”
In the end, the law was passed with 17 votes out of 21 in the affirmative.
Monaco is reluctant to tighten restrictions during Christmas, despite the circulation of Covid-19 reaching a staggering new high. Testing has also doubled in the lead-up to Christmas as health authorities reveal Delta still remains the dominant variant in the Principality.
The government’s weekly figures released on Monday show that from 13th to 19th December, 9,046 PCR and antigen tests were performed on residents and non-residents in the Principality. The average throughout the year has been around 4,000.
Of the most recent tests, 5.17% came back positive – the highest figure yet for Monaco. Meanwhile, the incidence rate reached 813.56, up from 544.98 the previous week, and just shy of the Alpes-Maritimes which has an incidence rate of 920. France, overall, has an incidence rate of 536.
The Princess Grace Hospital Centre is currently treating 14 people with Covid, four of whom are residents, while five others are in ICU, including two residents.
A year ago, these figures would have sent Monaco into lockdown. But now, with 25,667 members of the population double vaccinated, or around 66%, the government is reluctant to reintroduce such strict measures.
In an interview with Monaco Matin, Minister of State Pierre Dartout said that Prince Albert “wants the holidays to go as well as possible, without curfews or confinement. Also, there will be no change from the measures already in force and which must be respected. Restaurants will remain open, people will be able to shop normally in stores. Simply, we must continue to be, or be even more, attentive to the respect of barrier gestures, and make sure that as many people as possible get vaccinated. It will also be the heart of a communication campaign that will be implemented in January.”
The minister said that the government also has no intention of closing Monaco’s border to residents of France and Italy.
Currently, around a third of the eligible population in Monaco – 10,598 people – have received their third booster shot.
Just under 35% of the eligable population remains unvaccinated.
With regards to the presence of the Omicron variant in Monaco, health authorities say they have their suspicions that it is here.
“At the Monaco Scientific Centre, all positive samples are screened to identify the strains of the virus – Wuhan, Alpha, Delta,” says the Health Department’s Director of Health Action, Dr. Alexandre Bordero. “But, for the moment, we have not been able to identify for certainty the Omicron variant. When the variant detected does not correspond to any of these strains, we assume that it is the Omicron variant. But the ratio is very low, we are still currently seeing the Delta variant in 99% of cases.”
Dr. Bordero says it will take several weeks to determine if samples sent to a specialist centre in Marseille confirm the presence of Omicron in Monaco.
Photo by Monaco Life
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