A nurse in an intensive care unit in a private hospital in Antony.

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AFP

After the Easter weekend respite, the French are resuming a new period of restrictions, with confinement to 10 km and closed schools, to try to roll back the Covid-19 epidemic.

Since Saturday 7 p.m., businesses deemed non-essential have lowered the curtain.

Travel is limited to 10 km, and travel between regions is only permitted for compelling reasons.

Nurseries and schools closed on Tuesday

During the Easter weekend, the authorities nevertheless tolerated travel throughout the territory, to allow some to go green, or families to take their children to their grandparents.

Because for the first time since the first confinement a year ago, nurseries and schools will close on Tuesday morning.

Millions of parents will thus have to reconcile telework and home schooling, with courses provided by teachers at a distance.

However, the government has allowed childminders, who look after the children at home, to continue their activity.

5,400 patients in intensive care on Monday

The executive, through Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, then Prime Minister Jean Castex on Thursday, justified these measures by the inexorable deterioration of the health situation.

As of Monday evening, there were nearly 30,000 hospitalized Covid-19 patients, against a little more than 25,000 a month ago.

It is especially in the intensive care units, which welcome the most serious forms of the disease, that this pressure is exerted.

Also in one month, we went from 3,600 to more than 5,400 patients in critical care.

Friday, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran counted on a peak of contaminated people within "7 to 10 days approximately", before a peak of hospitalizations in intensive care in late April.

Monday, he acknowledged on TF1 that the country could approach the peak of resuscitation reached during the first wave, to 7,000 cases: "it is possible that we are approaching".

Véran assures that France has a capacity of "8,000 beds of sheaves"

At the same time he assured that the reception capacity of the heaviest patients was now increased "to 8,000 armed resuscitation beds".

The epidemic, which is in its third wave, flares up and the number of deaths accompanies it, with more than 96,800 dead since its appearance.

"The reality, the figures say it, is that we will have 100,000 deaths from Covid by the month of June," said Professor Karine Lacombe, head of the infectious diseases department at Hôpital Saint- Antoine in Paris, Sunday on LCI.

She expressed doubts about the effectiveness of the measures enacted over four weeks to curb the epidemic.

"It seems a bit short," said Karine Lacombe, according to which "we still have six, eight weeks" of restrictions, "if indeed the promises of vaccine arrivals are kept."

Government spokesman Gabriel Attal said on Sunday that it was “not expected” that the new restrictions “go beyond 4 weeks at this stage”.

To win this bet, the authorities are counting on an acceleration of the vaccination campaign in order to speed up the virus, and its British variant, more contagious and more virulent.

Production of vaccines on French soil

As of Monday, more than 9.3 million people had received a first dose.

Government Vaccine Mr Alain Fischer announced a short-term goal of 400,000 daily injections at the end of the week.

According to Olivier Véran, the country "has no logistics issue, but vaccine delivery".

The government is showing its confidence in the hoped-for supplies from pharmaceutical companies to achieve this objective.

And also expects a multiplication of centers and staff to administer them.

This week, vaccine production should start in France at the subcontractor Delpharm in Eure-et-Loir, and five industrial sites should be up and running in the coming months.

But it will essentially be about filling the vials, packaging and sanitizing, while the active ingredients of the vaccines will continue to be manufactured elsewhere, pending the development of a French vaccine.

We are also awaiting the arrival of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in mid-April, which requires a single injection, with 600,000 first doses before May.

These should easily find takers, while the AstraZeneca vaccine remains weighed down by doubts about its safety, despite assurances from health authorities.

Doses from the Anglo-Swedish laboratory were shunned during the weekend in vaccination centers in Nord and Pas-de-Calais, for fear of side effects.

As for vaccinators, the French army training hospitals will increase their reception capacities to vaccinate up to 50,000 people per week.

Large vaccination centers will also multiply in the region.

Like the Stade de France which will welcome its first volunteers on Tuesday, with a first objective of 10,000 injections per week.

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