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France will resume the nationwide lockdown on Thursday night in a desperate effort to halt the progression of the Covid-19 epidemic.
The lockdown will continue until at least December 1.
President Emmanuel Macron said he hopes he can get up in time for Christmas.
“The virus is circulating in France at a speed that even the most pessimists had not anticipated,” Macron said in a television speech. “The number of contaminations doubled in less than two weeks. Yesterday, 527 of our compatriots died of Covid-19. Yesterday we counted about 3,000 people in intensive care units, that is, more than half of our national capacity ”.
The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control reported nearly 254,000 new cases of Covid-19 in France over seven days from October 19 to 26, making it the European country where the virus is spreading the fastest.
This closure will differ from last spring’s 55-day closure in three important ways: elementary and middle schools will remain open, although colleges are being asked to teach online. Patients in nursing homes can receive visitors, on the condition that they wear masks and withdraw socially. Public services will remain open.
But bars and restaurants will close for everything but takeout. Non-essential stores must close. Again, citizens and residents will need to fill out a form every time they go to work, exercise, care for a close family member, go to a medical appointment, or buy food.
Macron said travel between French regions will stop, but did not say how far people can go from home. It also didn’t say whether time outdoors will be limited to one hour a day, as it was in the spring. The government will provide more details on Thursday.
Unlike last spring, Macron said, the epidemic has gripped the entire country. Hospitals have been forced to cancel major heart and cancer surgeries, in some cases postponed since the spring.
Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain “took tougher measures before us,” the president said. “For several weeks we have been one of the EU countries that performs the most tests.
“Without a doubt we should have respected the barrier measures better … Like all our neighbors, we are submerged by the sudden acceleration of the epidemic, by a virus that seems to gain strength as winter approaches.”
The second wave will undoubtedly be “tougher and more deadly than the first,” Macron warned. “Whatever we do, we will have about 9,000 patients in intensive care units by mid-November, that is, our full capacity.”
If France were not locked in, doctors would be forced to choose between road accident victims and Covid-19 patients, and between Covid-19 patients, Macron said. “This is unacceptable.”
He listed his priorities in this order: protecting the elderly and the most frail; protect young people, because the disease can have long-term consequences for them; protect medical staff still tired from last spring; protect the poorest; and protect the economy.
The French leader said that there is no contradiction between protecting people’s health and the economy, because “there is no prosperous economy if the virus is actively circulating” and “no health system can sustain itself if there is not a strong economy to finance it.”
It was important to find a balance, he said. “For us, nothing is more important than human life.”
Adopting a “herd immunity” strategy would mean another 400,000 people would die, he said. “We will never allow hundreds of thousands of our citizens to die.”
It was not possible to isolate people at risk in a bubble. The scale of the epidemic is so large, with between 40,000 and 50,000 contaminations daily, probably twice that number, that the test, trace and isolation method was simply not feasible.
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