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France is preparing for new lockdowns for Covid variants

France is preparing for new lockdowns for Covid variants

In France, the idea is to close some identified areas for the weekend, from Friday evening at 6pm to Monday morning at 6am, in a relatively rigid lockdown. Enrico Martial's article

With local flare-ups mainly due to the English variant, France abandons the single national model and returns to the territorial scheme with diversified measures, chosen in the openings after the first phase of the pandemic precisely by the task force led by Jean Castex at the time, before taking on the post of prime minister.

The idea is to close some areas identified for the weekend, from Friday evening at 6pm to Monday morning at 6am, in a relatively rigid lockdown, then reinforcing the other measures for the rest of the week, such as the generalized obligation of masks, the further reduction of presences in shops, equal to one person per 15sqm.

Precisely because of its proximity to England, Dunkirk recorded a strong diffusion of the English variant, with an incidence rising to almost 1000 new infected people out of 100 thousand, that is one in a hundred per week. In addition to the lockdown, 16,700 additional doses of the vaccine will be brought into the area, relatively few but targeted at the population most at risk. On 24 February, the Minister of Health, Oliver Véran, was at the hospital in Dunkirk, where he announced the lockdown next weekend for an affected population of 250,000 inhabitants.

In the Maritime Alps, between Nice and Menton, where 90% of the population of the department is concentrated, similar measures were already adopted two days ago. Also in this case, the next two weekends it will be possible to leave the house for only one hour a day, for shopping, animal care, a visit to a doctor, walks within 5 km from the house. In the area, the incidence rate is half that of Dunkirk, but still high: as of 22 February it was 583 positives per 100 thousand inhabitants. The proximity to Italy has its effects: on our side (almost) red areas have in fact been introduced in Ventimiglia and Sanremo until March 5 (with the closure of schools) and further measures for Ventimiglia, with the ban on take-away of food after 6pm.

Government spokesman Gabriel Attal said in a press conference yesterday, February 24, that a dozen departments cause concern. These are the space in the north, around Dunkirk, the entire coastal area from Nice to Marseille, the Moselle department bordering Germany, which has an incidence rate of 312 positives per 100 thousand inhabitants, and the Paris area with neighboring municipalities.

Today, February 25, in the afternoon, a press conference by Prime Minister Jean Castex is scheduled, from which a more extensive program of targeted closures is expected than the current one.

The hypothesis of strong restrictions that were avoided on 29 January would therefore be resumed. At the time, the French government's open position, in contrast with the proposals of the “Covid 19 Scientific Council” and with the expectations of the media, made it possible to keep most of the activities running and met with a fair consensus.

The new phase, however, is dictated by the evident development of variants , while the vaccination campaign is still slow. According to a study by the Pasteur Institute (in pre-print on February 23), a third wave in March could exceed the previous ones in magnitude, and vaccines will not be able to stop it. The number of new hospitalizations could rise to 4,500 per day, compared to the maximum of 3,750 in the first wave and 2,500 in the second wave, in the fall.

Nationally too, the numbers are starting to show signs of tension. For example, although the 7-day average of 20,109 new daily positives confirms relative stability (for comparison, in Italy there are 13,224), just yesterday there was a peak of new positives in 24 hours of 31,519 new cases, a value that does not exist. had been recording since last November.


This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/la-francia-si-prepara-a-nuovi-lockdown-per-le-varianti-covid/ on Thu, 25 Feb 2021 08:46:32 +0000.