The French parliament gave final approval on Sunday to the government’s latest measures to tackle the COVID-19 virus, including a vaccination passport, despite protests against it in the country, Reuters reported.

Deputies in the lower house of parliament adopted the decision with 215 “for” against 58 “against”, paving the way for the law to enter into force in the coming days.

The new law requires people to have a vaccination certificate to enter public places such as restaurants, cafes, cinemas, and travel long distances by train. Currently, unvaccinated people can enter such places with the results of a recent negative test for COVID-19. Nearly 78% of the population is fully vaccinated, according to the health ministry as of Saturday.

A number of regulations came into force on 15 January, according to which adults who received a second dose of the vaccine 7 or more months ago but without a booster dose are no longer considered to have completed their vaccination cycle.

According to the French Ministry of Health, it is about 560,000 people.

President Emmanuel Macron, who is expected to run for a second term in the April presidential election, told Le Parisien this month that he wanted to “anger” unvaccinated people by making their lives so complicated that they will eventually have to receive the COVID vaccine.

Thousands of vaccine protesters protested in Paris and some other cities on Saturday against the law, but their numbers fell sharply from the previous week, just after Macron’s remarks.

France is in the grip of the fifth wave of COVID-19 with daily new cases regularly reaching record levels above 300,000. April 2020