French care home looks beyond COVID with table football and minigolf

VILLENEUVE-LOUBET, France: Bernard Sellier stood a little hunched at the table, his hands gripping the rods of tiny football players and a boyish grin on his 86-year-old face at a return to normal life in his French care home.

For months during the COVID-19 crisis, there had been strict rules on social interaction and visiting rights as staff fought to keep a ferocious killer of the weak and elderly at bay. Now The Fig Tree and other care homes are lifting the toughest restrictions. Official data shows 99% of care home residents have received at least one COVID shot, and more than three quarters have had both.