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The 43-year-old leader has been heavily criticized in recent weeks by political opponents and many health experts for the overcrowding of COVID-19 patients in outbreak hospitals like the one in Paris.
In late January, Macron opposed the European trend and, despite the advice of his scientific advisers, decided not to issue a third quarantine in France.
However, addressing the population of the country on Wednesday, he announced a significant tightening of measures to combat the pandemic and ordered the closure of schools, the introduction of travel restrictions throughout France and the closure of stores of unnecessary items.
However, it did not require people to sit at home and avoid any communication, allowing travel between regions for the upcoming Easter weekend.
“Since the beginning of the year, we have followed a strategy to manage the epidemic without closing,” he said.
Because no quarantine was announced in January, “we have received precious weeks of freedom, weeks of education for our children and we have allowed hundreds of thousands of workers to survive without losing control of the epidemic,” the president said.
It should be clear in the coming days whether the new measures will be enough to stem the sharp increase in the number of infections. Currently, in the country more than 40 thousand people are detected per day. cases of new coronavirus infection: double that at the beginning of the month.
More than 53,000 were announced Wednesday night. new cases of infection, but these cases were identified in two days; such data was not released on Tuesday.
The country also recorded 304 new deaths from COVID-19, bringing the total number of victims from the pandemic to 95,667.
On Wednesday, the weather was warm and sunny, with many young people gathering in Paris, despite the ban on drinking alcohol outdoors.
Before Macron’s speech, the French Hospital Federation (FHF) asked him to “immediately impose a strict quarantine.”
