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PARIS: President Emmanuel Macron defended his decision to postpone a third shutdown on Saturday (January 30), telling the public that he had faith in their ability to control COVID-19 with less severe restrictions even as a third wave spreads and the vaccine. the launch fails.
Starting Sunday, France will close its borders to all but essential travel to and from countries outside the European Union, while arrivals from within the bloc will have to present a negative test. Large shopping malls will be closed and police patrols will be increased to enforce the curfew at 6 pm.
But Macron hasn’t ordered a new lockdown for the day, saying he wants to see first if other measures will be enough to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
With 10 per cent of cases now attributable to the most contagious variant first found in Britain, experienced doctors recommended a new lockdown, and an opinion poll showed that more than three-quarters of the French think that now it is inevitable. The survey also showed a drop in public confidence in the government’s handling of the crisis.
“I have confidence in us. These hours we are living in are crucial. Let’s do everything we can to stop the epidemic together,” Macron tweeted.
Government advisers judged that the slower-than-expected spread of a contagious variant first detected in Britain meant there was no risk of delaying a decision on the shutdown by a week, Health Minister Olivier Veran told the Journal du Dimanche .
But he added that action would be swift if the virus started to spread faster: “We never said that we would not impose a lockdown in the next two weeks if necessary.”
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Macron has also been criticized for launching vaccines at a slower rate than other large EU countries, and much slower than Britain or the United States. The latest figures from France showed that it had only administered 1.45 million doses of vaccine so far. Britain, by comparison, has logged 8.4 million.
France reported 24,393 new COVID-19 infections on Saturday, while the number of COVID-19 patients in the hospital remained above 27,000 for the fifth day in a row.
The rate of new infections is still lower than when the last lockdown was ordered in October, but hospitalization rates are already comparable.
Paris resident Sami Terki said it was “a good thing for now, even mentally, not to have to go through a new lockdown.” But he added: “My only concern is that then we make the decision to close too late.”
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The public health authority said the number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care dropped slightly to 3,113. In a sign of pressure on hospitals, two critically ill COVID patients were airlifted from Marseille to the western region of Brittany on Friday.
Professor Dominique Rossi, who heads the Marseille Hospitals Medical Commission, said the local health authority had asked hospitals in the Bouche-du-Rhone area to cancel 40 percent of all non-urgent medical interventions.
Managing the flow of COVID and non-COVID patients was “a real ethical headache,” he told Reuters. “The (COVID-19) projections are really worrying and the understaffing, which is already exhausted, adds another element of concern.”
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