Emmanuel Macron rectifies the shot against the coronavirus

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Less warrior rhetoric, more sanitary detail . Less president, more prime minister. Faced with the advance of the coronavirus epidemic and those suspended in the polls, Emmanuel Macron leaves Edouard Philippe to specify the strategy of the French Government that corrects previous errors: it orders a billion masks and five million tests.

That in terms of protection. At the other extreme, recovering the most seriously infected, the French government has set itself the goal of tripling the number of beds equipped with respirators. Of the 5,000 that it had at the beginning of the crisis (compared to 25,000 in Germany), it has reached 10,000 based on deprogramming surgical interventions or transforming transport equipment. The donation of 25 teams from Germany has more symbolic value but adds up.

The goal is to reach 14,500 beds. There are two difficulties for this: personnel (four to five toilets are needed per bed) and medications, some of which are scarce.

The problem is exacerbated because the incidence of the virus is much higher in the Greater East, whose capacity is saturated, and in the Paris region, near the limit. Hence the evacuation of 254 patients . From the East, 54 patients have been transferred in two TGVs to Aquitaine where the epidemic is mild and 80 have been taken to hospitals in Germany, Luxembourg and Switzerland in a German military Airbus and in French army helicopters.

Fifty patients from Burgundy and the Franche-Comté have been transferred to the Auvergne and Provence regions. From the Ile de France, (Paris and its region) a dozen sick people have been taken by helicopter to Tours, in the Loire.

These movements are the prelude to what is to come on "the first fifteen days of April that will be difficult" as the Prime Minister has admitted. The dreaded spike. To complicate matters, pollution limits were exceeded in the worst affected regions last week. Now that the absence of traffic and the closure of industries gives a truce to the contamination by nitrogen oxides, it turns out that agricultural fertilizers and the absence of rain and wind cause the increase of fine particles.

The greater transfer of patients in peacetime coincides with an unprecedented logistical deployment. An airlift between China and France with Antonov devices under the Russian flag has been organized to bring in the one billion masks that the French state has ordered.

An Air France plane opened its route on Sunday with 5.5 million masks. Seven million arrived on Monday on one of two Antonov freighters that have 16 scheduled flights. France currently consumes 40 million masks per week and is capable of producing eight million . It has 117 million in stock. So he has made a monster order to China.

The masks, in addition to being an essential product for toilets, is a sensitive material, politically speaking. The hundred thousand police and gendarmes deployed to monitor the confinement do not have and claim them.

It is also the lack of masks is the main criticism of the public to the executive: 88% believe that the Government reacted too late , according to an Ipsos poll for Le Monde published over the weekend. Same trend on tests (83%). More nuanced is the suspense about the moment in which it decided to close the shops (54%). The closure of schools was decided when it played for 51% of the French.

So it is logical that 56% of the French are not satisfied with the way the Macron government is managing the crisis. Percentage matching another poll, the Ifop for Journal du Dimanche .

Be it by its own conviction or by the influence of the polls, the French Government has taken a spectacular turn in the two most sensitive aspects. To say that only the sick had to wear a mask and health personnel have now ordered one billion units.

Ditto with the tests. Last week he made 5,000 a day. It wants to make 30,000 daily and go up to 50,000 in April. So you have ordered five million quick tests.

Large logistical efforts have led the Prime Minister to remove General Richard Lizurey, former Director General of the Gendarmerie between 2016 and 2019, from his retirement. A crisis management specialist who is evaluating the management of the command bridge in the fight against virus that has already infected more than 40,000 French and caused 2606 deaths. It will have an office close to Edouard Philippe's.

In addition to these rectifications, the executive will change the communication. The restless president will have to settle for on-site visits. And do not direct solemn speeches to the nation. The first was a critical and audience success ; the second worked. The third was a fiasco. So from now on it will be the Prime Minister who issues the messages.

Edouard Philippe will meet on Thursday with the spokesmen of the parliamentary groups. The opposition is not giving it war for now with the exception of the leader of the extreme right, Marine Le Pen, unleashed every time they put a mike in front of him. Example, "Every day the French measure the collapse of the state," he told Le Figaro.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• Germany
• France
• Emmanuel Macron
• Paris
• Coronavirus

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