Across France, a night curfew will begin at 6 a.m. Saturday “minimum for two weeks” and border controls will be strengthened by the government with extensive consideration of a larger, more contagious version of the coronavirus than before, Prime Minister Jean Castex announced.
“With the exception of obligations such as public duties, all places where businesses, shops and people receive services must close at 6 p.m.,” the prime minister said at a weekly press conference on the epidemic.
The extended curfew came into force in early January in the country’s ten eastern counties, and ten more in the southeastern part of the country this week, currently affecting the country’s 25-point area. In the rest of the country, the curfew has started at 8 so far.
“Based on the available data, it must be found that this measure is health effective: in the 15 counties where the curfew starts at 6 pm since 2 January, the increase in new cases is twice as high, where, three times less than in other counties “- stressed the head of government.
Jean Castex indicated that “compared to neighboring countries, the situation in France is under control, but the virus is also actively spreading”. The daily number of cases is on a high plateau, averaging around 16,000.
The much more contagious British and South African versions of the coronavirus are spreading, but in order to prevent the current infection from becoming a “dominant strain”, the government has decided to tighten border controls.
Those arriving from outside the European Union can now only enter France with a negative PCR test, where they will have to go through a one-week quarantine and then pass a second PCR test.
The Prime Minister stressed that the current epidemic situation does not justify another general quarantine, but that “the epidemic situation is significantly deteriorating” the government will order a full closure “immediately”.
Jean Castex also mentioned that the government “definitely keeps schools open because that’s the basic goal”. For first-year undergraduates, the seminars will resume in small groups from January 25, in addition to personal participation.
From Monday, the vaccination will be extended to all vulnerable people, regardless of age, with seven hundred new vaccination points opening. So far, only health and social workers over the age of 75 and those over the age of 50 have been able to apply for vaccination. So far, about 250,000 have been vaccinated against the coronavirus.
The number of cases per day has been rising at a slow pace for a week, ranging from 18 to 20,000 in recent days, with 21,228 new cases reported in the last 24 hours. The number of hospitalized patients is 25,000, including 2,700 in intensive care units, which means that about half of the intensive care beds are occupied by those infected with the coronavirus.
The number of fatalities has ranged from 150 to 380 a day in the past week, 248 have died in the last 24 hours, and 69,313 have lost their lives since the epidemic began.
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