LIVE - Coronavirus: reopening of shops on Saturday, decrease in hospitalizations

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Prime Minister Jean Castex detailed Thursday the gradual deconfinement announced by Emmanuel Macron.

It will be done in three stages, spread out until January 20 if the health situation in the face of Covid-19 continues to improve.

First step: this Saturday with in particular the reopening of all the shops.

In the rest of Europe, England is betting on à la carte deconfinement, according to local levels of incidence.

Globally, WHO warns of the unpreparedness of African countries to launch vaccination campaigns against the disease.

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Information to remember:

• France begins the first stage of gradual deconfinement on Saturday

• The Prime Minister announced new aid, targeting in particular young people and precarious workers

• Hospital pressure continues to decline

The framework of deconfinement fixed

French Prime Minister Jean Castex detailed Thursday the containment relief measures, which will be lifted on December 15 to be replaced by a national curfew, from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m.

Small businesses will reopen on Saturday, travel will be allowed within a radius of 20km for three hours.

It will be "imperative" to limit the number of guests at Christmas Eve and a maximum of 30 people has been set for religious services, the head of government added.

Ski resorts may reopen, but ski lifts will remain closed.

A return to normal, with the reopening of restaurants and resumption of university courses, is envisaged for January 20, but on the express condition that "the end of the year holiday period does not (have) resulted in a rebound of the epidemic ", warned the Prime Minister, recalling that until then," teleworking will remain the rule and will have to be as massive as possible ".

Jean Castex announced Thursday that he wanted to make 2021 "the year of French gastronomy" in order to help restaurants, which are particularly affected.

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Hospital pressure still falling

Health data on Covid-19 has stopped deteriorating, with a further decline in admissions to intensive care units, but the epidemic has still killed 340 people in hospital in the past 24 hours, according to Health figures public France published Thursday. 

With these 340 deaths in hospital, the number of deaths linked to the coronavirus has risen to 50,957 since the start of the epidemic in France, in hospitals and nursing homes.

29,282 people carrying the virus were still hospitalized Thursday, against 29,944 the day before, and after a peak to more than 33,000 in mid-November.

The intensive care units had 4,006 patients (against 4,136 the day before), including 192 new admissions in 24 hours (258 Wednesday). 

Since the beginning of November, the test positivity rate (proportion of the number of positive people compared to the total number of people tested) has continued to decline.

It was 12.2% Thursday, against 13% Wednesday

A vaccination strategy presented next week

"The strategy and the organization we are putting in place for the vaccine" will be presented "next week", the Prime Minister said.

Still uncertain a few weeks ago, the prospect of a vaccine protecting against Covid-19 has materialized over the past two weeks with a shower of announcements from laboratories concerning the effectiveness of their vaccine: Pfizer and BioNTech have drawn the first, followed by Moderna and AstraZeneca / University of Oxford.

The Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, recalled that the High Authority for Health (HAS) was called upon to determine in particular which would be "the target audiences" to be vaccinated as a priority, with "first intermediate recommendations" expected "at the end of November" and "consolidated" during the "first half of December".

"Everything will be presented to the French in full transparency", also promised Olivier Véran, conceding that "France may well be the country of Pasteur, it is a country which sometimes doubts, and which sometimes strongly doubts, more strongly than the others , when it comes to vaccine and the vaccine is produced within such tight deadlines ".

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The government must also decide the question of a possible compulsory isolation for infected people, a much debated subject.

The Prime Minister announced that the government would present its own bill on this point, specifying that the intention of the government was not to "control in order to control" or "to impose a constraint". 

New economic aid

Faced with the economic and social crisis, the Prime Minister announced aid for precarious, seasonal, intermittent or extras workers "with a" guaranteed resource of 900 euros per month "until February 2021 for those who have worked more than 60% of the time in 2019, or around 400,000 beneficiaries.

The Youth Guarantee, intended for 16-25 year olds who are "neither in employment, nor in studies, nor in training" and "in a situation of financial precariousness", will benefit in 2021 to "at least 200,000 young people", ie a doubling of its beneficiaries.

The Prime Minister also announced the rise in power of the aid system for student jobs which will increase from 1,600 to 20,000 jobs, to support "dropouts" during the first years of their studies.

For companies in certain sectors penalized by the crisis such as hotels, tourism or events, and whose turnover has fallen "at least by half", aid "from 15% to 20%" of the figure business will be granted.

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99% of English under severe restrictions          

Nearly 99% of England's 56 million people will continue to live under severe restrictions after lockdown ends in early December, the British government said Thursday.

After a month of general containment ending on December 2, England will return to restrictions imposed locally depending on the incidence of the virus, according to a three-level system of severity.

In this context, Arsenal will be the first Premier League team to play again in the presence of an audience since the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March, on December 3 in the Europa League, as a result of the measures taken Thursday by the British government.

Africa far from ready to vaccinate

The African continent is "far from ready" for mass vaccination, the WHO said Thursday, estimating in a statement barely 33% ready and urging it to intensify its preparations.

The main shortcomings concern the lack of funding, instruments of measurement and communication with the populations, and to remedy this "international solidarity will be imperative", she indicated.

WHO estimates the cost of immunizing priority populations in Africa alone at around 4.8 billion euros.

60 million cases, 1.4 million deaths

The pandemic has killed at least 1,422,951 people worldwide since the WHO office in China reported the onset of the disease at the end of December, according to an assessment compiled by AFP from official sources on Thursday. .

More than 60,427,590 cases of contamination have been officially diagnosed since the start of the epidemic.

The United States is the most affected country in terms of both the number of deaths and the number of cases recorded, respectively 263,413 and 12,879,762.

Brazil (171,460 dead deaths), India (135,223), Mexico (103,597) and the United Kingdom (56,533) follow.