Since Friday 6 p.m., Nice and Dunkirk have been confined until Monday 6 a.m.
20 departments are still placed under "enhanced surveillance" and could experience new restrictions soon.
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The government wants to take its time to decide on new health restrictions in 20 departments covering Paris, Lyon and Marseille, where coronavirus cases threaten to flare up.
While Nice and Dunkirk are preparing to experience their first weekends of the year 2021 confined, the entire Paris region, the Rhône, the Bouches-du-Rhône and part of Hauts-de-France and the Grand Est in particular , are placed under "increased surveillance" by the executive.
Follow the evolution of the situation live.
The main information to remember:
Nice and Dunkirk are living their first weekend of local containment
Twenty departments are still placed under "increased surveillance"
In Paris, the town hall procrastinates after its "hypothesis" of local confinement
Bookstores are now considered essential businesses
Start of local containment in Nice and Dunkirk
As announced by the government this week, confinement on the coastal strip of the Alpes-Maritimes and in the Dunkirk area began at 6 p.m. Friday.
It must continue until Monday 6 am and resume next week under the same terms.
Restrictions that aim to limit the outbreak of the coronavirus in these territories.
A measure that gives the blues to the Dunkirk traders encountered by Europe 1.
In addition, Prime Minister Jean Castex announced Thursday the establishment of "increased surveillance" for 20 departments with a high level of incidence - around 250 cases per 100,000 inhabitants -, a share of greater than 50 %, hospital pressure close to the critical threshold and increasing viral circulation.
These departments are those of Ile-de-France, a large part of Hauts-de-France and Provence-Alpes-Côte-D'azur, but also the departments of Rhône and Drôme, Moselle and Meurthe-et-Moselle, and finally Eure-et-Loir.
"We are therefore placing these departments under enhanced surveillance. I asked the prefects of the departments concerned to initiate consultations with elected officials in order to immediately invite all residents to the greatest vigilance and to consider, in all or part of these territories, braking measures similar to those implemented in Nice and Dunkirk, "said the head of government.
"We will take stock next week and then we will decide: if the situation continues to deteriorate, we will take reinforced measures which will come into force from the weekend of March 6," added Jean Castex.
Paris town hall is procrastinating after its "hypothesis" of local confinement
Paris City Hall is walking on eggshells.
After announcing that he wanted to offer the government a three-week confinement in the capital in order to "have the prospect of reopening everything" at its end, the first deputy Emmanuel Grégoire temporized by evoking a simple "hypothesis".
This proposal had been widely criticized until it was qualified as "nonsense" by Prime Minister Jean Castex.
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Bookstores are now essential businesses
Bookstores have joined the list of so-called essential shops and may remain open in the event of confinement on weekends, according to a decree published on Friday in the Official Journal.
Bookstores will be able to open Saturdays and Sundays between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., specifies this decree, while the cities of Nice and Dunkirk are living their first weekends confined.
Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot "welcomed" the government's decision.
"Bookstores are essential businesses. There was never any doubt. During the second confinement, the possibility of click-and-go and the free shipping costs of books offered to booksellers made it possible to maintain their activity."
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Slight change in hospitalizations, the positivity rate increases
The number of hospitalized patients was 25,130 Friday, against 25,317 the day before, including 3,445 in intensive care (3,430 Thursday), according to figures from Public Health France published in the evening.
As regards contamination, however, the positivity rate (percentage of people positive for Covid-19 out of all people who have been tested) continues to climb, to 7.1% against 6.9% on Thursday.
It thus returns to the 2021 high (7.1%) recorded at the end of January.
A total of 25,207 people have tested positive for the coronavirus over 24 hours (25,403 Thursday).
The epidemic has killed 286 people (261 Thursday), bringing the total number of deaths from the disease in France to 86,147 people.
And the very first glimmers of hope appear.
Public Health France (SpF) thus noted that "the first effects" of the vaccination campaign were emerging in those over 75, with a drop in the incidence rate during the week of February 15, and, above all, a " sharp decrease "in deaths (-22.5%, or -143 deaths) in social establishments, including nursing homes, the previous week.
But the duration of the restrictions and the anxiety-provoking climate caused by the pandemic is also being felt.
SpF noted "a significant increase in anxiety states" in the population (19.2-22.7%) and depressive states (19.5-22.7%) between January and February.
Massive deployment of saliva tests at school?
The government wants to deploy saliva tests on a massive scale from next week as a priority in nursery and elementary schools.
These tests, which will be organized randomly and repeatedly, or in areas where the virus circulates a lot, should make it possible to strengthen the Covid-19 screening policy and break the chains of contamination as quickly as possible.
We must be able to "quickly test 300,000 children per week," Prime Minister Jean Castex said Thursday evening.
But the unions deplore a lack of organization and anticipation.
They doubt that the devices can be implemented effectively in the immediate future.
The Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region announced on Friday the launch of a massive campaign of tests targeting 100,000 high school students and an epidemiological investigation operation in schools, colleges and high schools in the region.
Axa sentenced on appeal to compensate a restaurateur
The insurer Axa was ordered to compensate a Marseille restaurateur for his operating losses due to Covid-19 by the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal, the first appellate court to rule on the merits of this type of litigation before several other courts.
"We will carefully study the reasons for the decision (...). We recall that this same contract is currently the subject of debate before several other appellate courts in the country", reacted Axa in a statement.
In any case, this news seems to reassure a good number of restaurateurs.
At the microphone of Europe 1, one of them recalls that a possible compensation would compensate for the loss of earnings on days of closure.
Johnson & Johnson vaccine recommended by expert committee
A committee of experts unanimously recommended on Friday the emergency authorization in the United States of Johnson & Johnson's single-dose vaccine against Covid-19 for people aged 18 and over.
The opinion of this committee, composed mainly of independent scientists, is advisory, but it still confirms the probable authorization of the vaccine by the American health authorities, expected in the wake.
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More than 2.5 million deaths worldwide
The pandemic has killed more than 2.5 million people worldwide since December 2019, according to a report established by AFP on Friday in the middle of the day.
More than 112.9 million cases of infection have been diagnosed.
The United States is the most affected country with 510,134 deaths, ahead of Brazil (252,835), Mexico (183,692), India (156,825) and the United Kingdom (122,070).