Beaten Back, the Coronavirus gained strength in France

PARIS – As the two women sat in deck chairs on Saturday night enjoying the last rays of the sun on the Canal de l’Ourcq in Paris, nearby speakers greeted them with a reminder that they were in a new mask-required zone were.

“You have your mask on?” Safiya Zenag, unmasked, asked her friend, who replied, ‘No, I did not bring it. I hate wearing it. ”

Against a recent recurrence of cases of coronavirus, officials have made it mandatory to wear a mask in sprawling areas of Paris and other cities across the country, urging the French not to give up their protection and making heavy gains against the virus. in jeopardy two months lockdown this spring.

The signs of a new wave of infection appeared over the summer when people began to resume much of their lives from pre-coronavirus, traveling through France and socializing in cafes, restaurants and parks. Many, especially the young, have visibly relaxed their alertness and have not followed any rules about wearing masks or social distance.

In recent days, France has recorded about 3,000 new infections every day, roughly the figure at the beginning of the month, and authorities are investigating a growing number of clusters.

Only 30 percent of new infections are in young adults, ages 15 to 44, according to a recent report. Because they are less likely to develop serious forms of the disease, deaths and the number of patients in intensive care remain at a fraction of what they were at the height of the pandemic. Yet officials take no chances.

“The indicators are bad, the signals are worried and the situation is getting worse,” Jérôme Salomon, the French director of the Ministry of Health, told France Inter radio station last week. “The fate of the epidemic is in our hands.”

Mr. Salomon warned that the virus would continue to circulate and that people would have to adjust their behavior. “We have to live with it,” he said.

France killed 30,400 people through the virus – one of the worst tolls in the world – and experienced an economically devastating lockdown from mid-March to mid-May. By unlocking it, however, France managed to stop the spread of the virus and lift most of the restrictions at the beginning of the summer.

Philippe Juvin, the head of the emergency department at the Georges Pompidou European Hospital in Paris, said he was not surprised by the turnout in cases.

“You shut people down for two months, and stop infections,” he said. “If people are allowed to go outside again, it’s not surprising that infection starts again.”

The course of the pandemic in Europe has followed a somewhat similar trend, with Spain also reporting new local clusters. But important differences exist between countries. In the past week, as France reported 20,000 new cases, Italy reported 7,000, and Britain 3,000, according to data collected by The New York Times.

Mircea Sofonea, an epidemiologist at the French University of Montpellier, said that the current situation “has nothing to do with terms of imminent health risk” with the situation that preceded the European lockdowns, because the number of hospitals with coronavirus patients and deaths remain very low.

In France, the daily death toll has shifted by around 15 in the past week. In contrast, at the height of the epidemic in March and April, hundreds died every day in France, with the toll sometimes rising to four figures.

In April, intensive care units sat at 140 percent capacity; but 7 percent were occupied about 10 days ago.

Mr. Sofonea said all European countries expect a catastrophe from the epidemic in the autumn, when people who are on holiday immediately return to work and when social interaction resumes.

The French authorities are worried that the growing number of infections in young people, many of whom are asymptomatic, may be contributing to the spread of the virus to older, more vulnerable people.

“Young people felt a little more overwhelmed,” said Olivier George, a 36-year-old baker. “That’s probably what made them the most affected group.”

Across the continent, crowds of young people flock to illegal parties organized in outlying areas, despite the risk of infection.

While the number of new cases in France has been steadily increasing, it is difficult to compare with earlier stages in the epidemic.

The number of tests carried out by France has increased to about 600,000 a week – or about six times the number carried out during the epidemic. At the time, France was suffering from severe shortages of test kits, making many impossible for Covid-19 to test.

Raphaëlle Escande, 23, a business school student, said she fell ill in March with symptoms of the disease, including loss of smell, a sore throat and fever. ‘That took three weeks,’ ‘she said. “I stayed home because you can not test.” ‘

The Scientific Council of France, a government body advising President Emmanuel Macron on the crisis in coronavirus, said in a report in late July that “the balance is fragile, and we can change course at any time from a less controlled scenario.”

The council warned that a second wave was “quite possible” in the fall, given the current trend.

The sharp rise in cases has led the government to declare Paris and the Marseille region high-risk zones, effectively giving local authorities the power to put in place new measures aimed at controlling the disease.

In Paris, mask consumption was limited to public transport and facilities inside, as it was in the rest of the country. But the demand was extended to plenty of outlying areas about a week ago, and was further expanded over the weekend over many more swathes of the city.

Prime Minister Jean Castex warned last week that the country had “gone the wrong way” in recent weeks, saying it would “extend the obligation to wear masks in public spaces as far as possible.”

The government’s reliance on face masks as a major weapon in its fight against the virus amounts to a near face in its strategy. Once in the epidemic, dealing with dire shortages of masks, the government said they were useless against the virus – contrary to its own years-long public health policy.

“I did not find them at all cohesive,” said Laura Castel, 31, a high school teacher. ‘In the beginning it was,’ Do not wear masks, they are not necessary. ‘But that, in my opinion, simply means that we did not have any masks. ”

Now that France has more than enough supplies of masks, Ms Castel said, the government is singing “a new tune.” ‘

Perhaps because of the government’s conflicting messages about masks, people were reluctant to start wearing them in new mask-required zones in Paris. Over the weekend along stretches of the Seine, only about half of pedestrians had their faces covered.

The police will enforce the measures – which will be in place for at least a month – with a fine of 135 euros, or $ 159.

In addition to masks and testing, France now has other tools not available at the start of the epidemic, including contact tracing teams and a contact tracing smartphone application – though neither has been fully tested yet.

While the French are learning how to live with the virus, health officials have adapted by moving quickly to extinguish local outbreaks and tighten restrictions as needed. The aim is to prevent local clusters from spiraling out of control and pushing France back into a national lockdown.

Anthony Rasoloarimanana, 40, a travel agent who walked under the elevated metro gates of Boulevard de la Chapelle in northern Paris, a new mask-required zone, said he was concerned the recent period of re-election was similar to that just before the lockdown in March.

“Have the sacrifices we have made over several months been in vain?” he said of the lockdown. “That would be terrible.”

Théophile Larcher carried report from Paris. Monika Pronczuk carried report from Brussels.