The verdict on the effects of the curfew is expected in the coming week, explained Sunday, January 24 the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, specifying the possible announcement of "additional measures" - a new "confinement" - if the hospital data is not declining and if the Covid-19 variants continue to spread.
In an interview with the readers of the newspaper Le Parisien published on Sunday, Olivier Véran said to wait "to be fixed on the effects of the curfew".
"We will be next week," he says.
"If things don't go down and if the variants (of Covid-19) start to spread everywhere", the government "will take additional measures", he warns.
"And it's called containment."
"If we see that the virus begins to progress strongly, we close. We will do it if we have no choice," continues Olivier Véran.
The containment "that we put in place in October was effective. But I can tell you that there is no hidden plan, nor a pre-written scenario."
French hospitals counted nearly 25,900 patients with Covid-19 on Saturday, including some 2,900 in intensive care units.
Stable figures compared to the day before, after several days of slow progress.
Reduced in early December, the number of hospitalizations has since remained on a plateau of between 24,000 and just under 26,000.
The Élysée indicated that a Defense Council would take place next week, on a date not yet disclosed.
"Vigilance" in schools
On the side of schools, at present, "the situation allows school continuity. But we are vigilant", assured for his part the Minister of National Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, in the Journal du dimanche (JDD) .
"All our work consists in avoiding this hypothesis (of a closure of establishments), even if it remains conceivable in the event of absolute necessity. School remains essential for our children," he adds.
In addition, since the night of Saturday to Sunday, presenting a negative PCR test has become mandatory for travelers from the European Union in French ports and airports.
The decree was published in the Official Journal on Sunday.
The obligation to present a negative test carried out 72 hours before has already applied since mid-January to travelers from other countries.
Controls take place mainly in ports and airports, currently some 62,000 people per week according to the Minister Delegate in charge of Transport, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari.
But border workers and land transport are exempt.
At Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle, where barnums intended for tests have been installed in the terminal which brings together European flights, this new rule "will not change much", an airport source explained to AFP.
Most of these travelers already have a test, the others will be able to perform an antigen test on site, and "the only unknown will be the waiting time," she said.
One million vaccinated
On the vaccine front, the Prime Minister, Jean Castex, was able to rejoice on Saturday that the country crossed the threshold of one million vaccinated against the virus responsible for Covid-19, at least with a first injection.
Fixed for the end of January, this level was crossed four weeks after the start of the French vaccination campaign.
These vaccinated are part of the priority audiences (elderly people in nursing homes or over 75, caregivers over 50, etc.) and the population vaccination rate ranges from 0.2% in Guyana to 2, 3% in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté.
Beyond that, the Minister for Industry, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, said she was "reasonably confident" that France would exceed its goal of vaccinating "15 million people" by June, and held to reassure on the deliveries of doses: more than 1.9 million have already been received.
Will this be enough to cope with the virus and its variants?
"The absolute urgency is to vaccinate the most vulnerable with the vaccines available to protect them against the disease", estimates the doctor Yves Lévy, director of the Vaccine Research Institute (VRI) at the CHU Henri-Mondor in Créteil ( Val-de-Marne), in an interview with JDD.
"We can think (that these vaccines) will remain partially effective" in the face of new variants, he adds.
"However, this poses the long-term question of the need to adapt vaccines to mutations that have already appeared or are to come. We must therefore be prepared for the possibility of having to revaccinate on a regular basis. And therefore, no doubt, to put developing new vaccines, as we do every year for influenza, "continues the doctor.
For him, the idea of achieving "group immunity" is "illusory" and blocking the arrival of the English mutant is "mission impossible".
Faced with variants, "containment remains the most effective weapon", says this specialist.
With AFP
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