How France dodges the third lockdown, at least for the moment
There will be no third lockdown in France, at least for the moment. Here because. Enrico Martial's point
There will be no third lockdown in France, at least for the moment. For a week the ads had been bouncing on the pages of the newspapers, the curfew at 6pm seemed no longer sufficient, with the indicators slowly rising and potentially capable of accelerating, as stressed by the health minister, Oliver Véran, last Thursday, at a press conference.
The greatest concern comes from the English and South African Covid variants, which have progressively reached the share of 20% of positive cases recorded in France.
In public perception, the United Kingdom would have delayed the restrictive measures to respond to the most contagious variant by two to three weeks, paying the price with a surge and a daily average of over 1,500 deaths and up to 1,820 deaths on 21 January. Portugal would have underestimated the contagiousness of the variants by obtaining a number of out-of-control positives and ambulances in front of saturated hospitals.
Furthermore, as indicated by Minister Véran, the resuscitation beds in France are now 60% occupied by Covid patients. Overloads in some areas, such as Nice and the Alpes-Maritimes, now force patients to be transferred to neighboring departments. Generally speaking, again on January 21, the European Center for Disease Control (ECDC), concerned about the increased spread of Covid, invited member states to monitor transmission rates to assess the impact and spread of variants.
These threatening scenarios are flanked by concerns about the possible economic fallout of a hard lockdown and its social sustainability, thinking about the recent uprisings in the Netherlands. According to a poll on January 27th, in favor of restrictive measures similar to those adopted in the first phase have gone from 93% last spring to 48% now.
At 8.30 pm on Friday 29 January, Prime Minister Jean Castex therefore took charge of the announcement of a moderate crackdown and the related explanations, at the end of a ministerial meeting in the "health defense council" format with President Emmanuel Macron . It was a dry presentation, also marked by the change of modality with respect to the sequence in which the French President first addressed the nation, illustrating the measures and their general framework, then delegating the explanation of the details to the head of government.
From Sunday, the approximately 400 shopping centers of more than 20 thousand square meters with a non-food vocation will remain closed (and the staff will be redundant), the application of the 6 pm curfew will be stricter, even in police checks and in sanctions, up to the repression of clandestine parties.
Entries from countries outside the European Union (therefore also from the United Kingdom) will be prohibited, except in cases of absolute necessity, while those who enter France from another EU country also by train or car – and not only at airports and some crossings – will be required to submit a molecular test done within the previous 72 hours Teleworking will be the rule wherever possible, thus overcoming the slackening that has allowed us to return to the office – also for psychological balance – one day a week.
The vaccinations , which involved 1.5 million French people for the first dose, will continue despite delivery delays. However, we are far from the 4 million vaccinated people expected by February and the hope of being able to partially contain the third wave even with this tool.
The decision to avoid the lockdown was taken after the consultations that the government held between Thursday and Friday with the presidents of the parliamentary groups and with the social partners, meetings that in the past have left controversial aftermath.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/francia-terzo-lockdown/ on Sat, 30 Jan 2021 07:56:22 +0000.