Reconfinement, extended curfew ... What are the possible options?

From an extended curfew to total reconfinement, the government is considering various options (Illustration) -

• The government is expected to announce new restriction measures in the coming days to contain the coronavirus epidemic.

• The Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin has already warned the French about the harshness of the next measures.

• Among the various possible options: the extension of the curfew, targeted confinements or directly a total confinement of the country.

What is going to fall on our heads?

Many French people are asking the question, while the President of the Republic is meeting this Tuesday and Wednesday two Defense Councils devoted to the epidemic.

He should, following the latter, announce new restriction measures in order to cope with the second wave of particularly violent coronavirus in France.

Invited on France Inter this Tuesday morning, the Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin has already warned the French on the harshness of the next measures: “We must expect difficult decisions.

"If no final decision has been chosen for the moment, various options, in particular demanded by the Scientific Council, epidemiologists or health professionals have emerged for several days.

takes stock of these. 

An extension of the curfew

The most "gentle" option for the French.

This would mean that the curfew for the moment applied to 54 departments could be extended "at the level of the national territory", explained on RTL the president of the Scientific Council Jean-François Delfraissy.

He said that this extension would also be done on the schedules.

For now, the curfew is set from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., but it could be advanced to 7 or 5, for example.

"The goal is really to avoid gatherings, because we have seen with the current curfew that people instead of going to drink shots at 8 pm, do so at 6 pm when leaving work, explains

Fabienne El Khoury, epidemiologist and researcher at Inserm.

It would also push more companies to telework their employees.

However, recent studies show that it is a good way to slow down contamination.

"

Targeted containments

In addition to an extended curfew, the government could decide to enforce lockdown on weekends.

"Here again, it is a way to avoid gatherings, particularly those in closed spaces, privileged in this winter period and where the virus circulates more", details Fabienne El Khoury.

Local re-containments in areas where the virus is exploding are also part of the options.

This measure is already applied by several of our European neighbors such as Spain with the region of Navarre, Germany and Portugal.

"This can be a way of limiting contamination if there are clusters concentrated in areas and that we are able to properly trace the cases", qualifies the epidemiologist.

On LCI, the epidemiologist Martin Blachier proposes to reconfine only the most fragile people, in order to prevent that "the virus meets the population which is likely to end up in the hospital".

"It is difficult to apply specific measures to certain people, but what is certain is that the elderly or with a medical history must be more careful and the population must also take care of them", estimates Fabienne El Khoury.

Closure of schools

The epidemiologist and professor of public health at the University of Geneva, Antoine Flahault advises not to reopen colleges, high schools and universities on November 2.

"I think, for my part, that schools should not reopen at the start of the All Saints holidays," he said on BFMTV, considering that these were places where the transmission of virus was high.

"Studies carried out in various countries on the effectiveness of measures against Covid-19 show that it is effective," admits Fabienne El Khoury.

The problem is that for primary schools it forces parents to keep the children at home.

You have to look at the big picture.

"Antoine Flahault proposes on this subject to keep primary schools open, but" to impose the wearing of masks, even on children over 6 years old ".

Total containment

The request comes from many epidemiologists and health professionals who already consider the situation to be out of control and fear that hospitals will be overwhelmed by this second wave.

"We must confine the country from today and this will only have consequences in a fortnight, which is already late in view of the increasing number of hospitalizations in recent days, explains

epidemiologist Catherine Hill

to

.

These are patients who will be found within 8 to 15 days in the intensive care units who will be overwhelmed.

"

This is also the opinion of Professor Gilles Pialoux, head of the infectious diseases department at Tenon hospital in Paris, who calls for “clearly reconfiguring the country”.

"The current difficulty is precisely in the fact that we have a national dimension of the epidemic, it is the paradox, whereas we were rather in a concentrated epidemic (on a few regions, editor's note) in France in the first wave ", He indicated on BFMTV.

On RTL, Jean-François Delfraissy assured that this total confinement could be "less hard" and shorter than that from March to May.

It "would probably make it possible to maintain a school activity and a certain number of economic activities", with an increased use of telework, he said.

However, the executive fears the economic and psychological impact that this decision could cause.

"If we completely reconfine as we did in March, it is not less than 10% recession that we risk, it is a collapse of the economy", warned the president of Medef, Geoffroy Roux. from Bézieux, on RMC.

For his part, the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, confirmed that the French gross domestic product (GDP) would fall again in the last quarter of 2020, due to the restrictions imposed by the second wave.

Mass test

For epidemiologist Catherine Hill, we should not be content to confine the whole country without doing anything else.

“The government is taking this contagious epidemic upside down.

Currently, we are looking for and finding positive cases much too late, she explains.

Because of the delays, these people have had time to infect many more, so there is no point.

In addition, half of the contaminations are the result of asymptomatic carriers.

If we don't look for them, the epidemic continues.

To find and isolate asymptomatic carriers, it is necessary to massively test the population and isolate positive cases.

This is the only solution, otherwise we are going to disaster.

"

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• Covid 19

• Health

• Coronavirus

• Confinement

• Emmanuel Macron

• Curfew