‘April is going to be terrible’: Can France avoid another national blockade?

The French government has promised to do everything it can to avoid a third national shutdown, but with cases rising dramatically almost everywhere and hospitals in Paris overwhelmed, can it avoid another crippling shutdown?

This week will be decisive for the strategy supervised by President Emmanuel Macron and his government, who maintain that each day without a lockdown is a bonus for France that they see exhausted after a year of restrictions.

Tighter new measures were introduced on March 20, covering about a third of the population, including the Paris region, but the government fell short of placing full stay-at-home orders with many stores still open and people allowed themselves meet outdoors in small groups.

Now pressure is mounting to close schools and go further, with many doctors and epidemiologists warning that the disease is out of control.

“If we get to a point where the risk is too great, we have always said that a blockade is the final decision, the last resort,” ruling party deputy Aurore Berge told the Public Senate channel on Monday.

He defended the strategy of trying to “find a balance” between the management of the health emergency taking into account the psychological impact of the confinement measures, as well as the economic and social costs.

“We will analyze the effectiveness of the containment measures in the coming days and take others if necessary,” Macron told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper on Sunday, adding: “At this time nothing has been decided.”

The 43-year-old head of state resisted pressure from his scientific advisers and the health minister to impose a national blockade in late January and is under fire from political opponents a year before the elections.

The launch of the vaccine in France has also been affected by a chronic shortage of doses.

‘Disaster medicine’

The daily figures for new infections and hospitalizations are a disappointing reading.

Over the past seven days, an average of around 37,000 new cases have been reported daily, a quarter more than in the previous seven-day period, while the shortage of beds in hospitals in the worst affected areas is worsening .

In total, there are currently 28,000 people hospitalized with Covid-19 in France, slightly lower than the peak of 32,000 hospitalizations in the first wave in March and April last year, and 33,500 in the second wave, the data shows. official figures.

There are 4,872 people in intensive care, less than the peak of 7,019 in the first wave, but almost equal to the 4,903 in the second wave.

“The outlook is worse than terrifying,” Jean-Michel Constantin, chief of anesthesia and intensive care at Pitie Salpetriere hospital in southeastern Paris, told RMC radio on Monday.

“We are already at the level of the second wave and we are approaching the first … April is going to be terrible.”

In Seine-Saint-Denis, north of Paris, the poorest department in mainland France, cases are now over 700 per 100,000 people, which means that around one in 150 people is infected.

More than 40 doctors and emergency care directors from the Paris region put their names in an open letter on Sunday in which they warned that hospitals would soon have to start rationing access to intensive care beds and screen patients. considered to have the best chance of survival.

“We cannot remain silent without betraying the Hippocratic oath we once made,” they wrote.

Macron has always made this a red line, saying he would never force medical personnel to make life-and-death decisions.

“There is a feeling of anger at finding himself in a situation that will force him to dedicate himself to disaster medicine,” Remi Salomon, a senior figure at the AP-HP public hospitals in Paris, said Sunday.

“In 10 days, 15 days or three weeks we can be overwhelmed,” he told the BFMTV news channel, calling for a new closure, including for schools.