Hey RS: there have been several published reports ( at www.connexionfrance.com/.../I-cancelled-my-trip-French-health-pass-delays-hit-non-EU-tourists and https://thepointsguy.com/news/how-americans-can-apply-for-french-digital-health-pass/) that French health passes for tourists are being delayed by weeks
.I just modified my original application and received a bounceback message reading:
"Dear Sir or Madam,
We are sorry to inform you that we are currently receiving a very large number of requests and will not be able to process them all.
We remind you that a negative result of an antigen test taken at a pharmacy, available all over France, grants the user a health pass that is valid for three days (72 hours).
We inform you that a new application is available online for foreign citizens except students : https://www.demarches-simplifiees.fr/commencer/passe-sanitaire-etrangers
and following this link for students : https://www.demarches-simplifiees.fr/commencer/passe-sanitaire-etudiants."
Since my departure for Paris is in eight days, it strikes me as possible that the entire group will be required to take rapid-antigen tests every three days, at a cost of 29 euros (roughly $34 US) a pop. This is not good news.
Can you investigate and report back here?
Thanks,
I called RS after posting this and they told me that they have discussed the situation with their folks in France. They said they’ve arranged to obtain “temporary health passes” for group members who haven…
I called RS after posting this and they told me that they have discussed the situation with their folks in France. They said they’ve arranged to obtain “temporary health passes” for group members who haven’t received their official QR codes. I assume this means that we’ll all take the three-day antigen test and keep our fingers crossed that there aren’t any false positives. RS hopes that once the three days has expired, all the government will have had time to get caught up and issue everyone’s health passes. While I wouldn’t hold my breath, if they don’t arrive, I imagine we can keep taking the antigen tests every three days, though that can get $$$. I suggested that RS send an email explaining all this to members of its French tours.It sounds as though they are on top of the situation, and I figured it would reassure tour members to know that. I do sympathize with the difficulty of attempting to run hundreds of travel programs worldwide during a global pandemic, when the rules and restrictions changes roughly every five minutes. Still, if I wasn’t reading these forums as religiously a I have been, I would never have known that the procedure for applying for the health pass had changed. Thanks very much to all my fellow posters.
Thanks for calling and for posting! I had sent an email as well but it was Friday when I read your post so I figured the Road Scholar office staff were off for the weekend.
Are you following on other forums as well? I'm a regular reader/poster on the Rick Steves forum as well as the TA Paris forum. A person posted on the Rick forum that they had had issues in SW France but in smaller venues (family run vineyards). During their trip they had finally gotten gotten their QR codes from their Pass Sanitaire submissions so things were easier. They were having to get the antigen tests done. I can't imagine a tour group lining up at a pharmacy every 3 days!
Since they mentioned that they have worked out a method to obtain "temporary" codes for tour members who have not gotten them yet (either submitted and not received or not submitted either because the information was buried in the paperwork or because they couldn't figure it out) I wonder if they are working with local pharmacies for each tour group to get a pharmacist to convert the CDC cards to Pass Sanitaires? There were some successes posted early on on both TA and Rick Steves but most have given up after being rejected by several pharmacies.
I'm going to Paris for 2 weeks ahead of my tour in SW France so hopefully the CDC card will suffice for everything I want to do there. Biggest worry is the TGV train to Bordeaux from Paris although no one on either of those forums has reported difficulty being able to board with just a CDC card.
Meanwhile, you must be excited! Are you packed, lol? I have various piles out on a card table and started washing my travel clothes and will take them out of my "rotation", lol.
~Pam