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This Friday, France begins a new national lockdown to try to stop the new coronavirus, a drastic decision that the Government had to take due to the failure of other measures, such as the curfew in the regions.
The country is the second in Europe, after Ireland, to apply a new national confinement, which in this case will initially extend for a month, until December 1.
France has already recorded 36,020 deaths and 1.28 million positive cases from SARS-CoV-2, with an ever-increasing rate of hospitalizations and intensive care hospitalizations.
The Paris region had record congestion last night, with 730 kilometers of car lines.
On Wednesday, queues reached 400 kilometers in the same region, traffic officials said, noting that tens of thousands of people left the capital and its periphery to pass confinement in their places of origin or second residences.
“I understand that attitude. Confinement is extremely harsh,” the president of the Paris Regional Council, Valerie Pecrésse, told France Info radio today.
This morning, there were only 15 miles of congestion on the access to the capital, an unusually low number.
The streets of Paris are much quieter than usual, with a notable decrease in the circulation of private vehicles and, above all, you can see people who were shopping on the sidewalks.
The confinement that begins today is softer than the one the country experienced between March and May.
Citizens will be able to go one hour a day, a maximum of one kilometer from home, to walk or play sports, with kindergartens and primary and secondary schools open.
Weddings and funerals can be held, although with very limited attendance (maximum six and 30 people, respectively).
Establishments that receive public and non-essential trade will be closed. The government has promised to review the situation after two weeks to see if it is feasible to reopen some of these businesses.
The Executive chaired by Emmanuel Macron tries to ensure that the closure has the least possible impact on an economy that is expected to fall by 11% this year.
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire announced on Thursday that the state will spend 15,000 million euros for each month of confinement in aid to affected companies, the self-employed and partial unemployment benefits.
Seven out of ten French people approve of the closure, according to a poll published by the newspaper Le Figaro, although only a small majority (52%) support the closure of non-essential businesses.
The Minister of the Interior has already guaranteed that this weekend there will be flexibility in the application of measures so that families who left for the autumn school holidays can return to their homes in view of the resumption of classes on Monday.
Flexibility will also be expanded to facilitate visits to cemeteries next Sunday, November 1.
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 1.1 million deaths and more than 44.5 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report by the French agency AFP.
In Portugal, 2,428 people died from 132,616 confirmed cases of infection, according to the most recent bulletin from the Directorate General of Health.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected at the end of December 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
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