Paris (AFP)
The government, which consults parties and unions, is preparing minds for stricter health measures, including a possible third confinement, after having noted that the curfew at 6 p.m. was not enough in the face of more contagious variants of the Covid-19 virus .
These variants, which have spread in the United Kingdom and South Africa and which now represent a tenth of cases in France (2,000 per day), "are likely to lead to a very strong epidemic wave, even stronger than the previous ones. given (their) strong contagiousness, "the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, warned during a press point on Thursday afternoon.
In the immediate term, "we are not strictly speaking in an epidemic wave (...) but the virus is circulating at a high level", "it diffuses more quickly every week" and the effectiveness of the curfew at 6 p.m. "is fading," added the minister, as the government promises to make decisions at the end of the week.
According to data from Public Health France, just over 141,000 people tested positive last week, compared to 128,000 the previous week, when the figure had remained stable.
"It is obviously possible to think about extending the holidays on one side or the other. But our goal is that the children can continue to learn", confirmed Gabriel Attal, while the Minister of Education Jean-Michel Blanquer militates rather to "preserve the calendars as much as possible".
- "Pedagogy" -
Discussions are also underway on a possible tightening of the sanitary protocol in shops, especially supermarkets, said the president of the Système U sign, Dominique Schelcher.
Before new announcements, Prime Minister Jean Castex is due to conduct a series of consultations on Thursday and Friday with the presidents of political groups in Parliament, associations of elected officials and social partners.
An initiative which does not convince the oppositions, always critical: "the consultation begins after in reality the decisions have been taken", tweeted the number one of the PS Olivier Faure.
While a new confinement was presented at the end of last week as necessary by the president of the scientific council, Jean-François Delfraissy, the government delayed, saying it wanted to wait for the results of the curfew at 6 p.m. with two weeks of decline (i.e. this weekend), and new data on the spread of the more contagious English and South African variants.
The executive is looking for a "point of balance", with the need to "protect the French" without however "putting the country under cover", explained the boss of LREM deputies Christophe Castaner.
All against a background of questions about the population's fed up with health restrictions, while cafes, restaurants and cultural places have never reopened since their closure at the end of October.
Every day new indicators of economic degradation appear: for example, housing construction fell by 6.9% in 2020 and the trend looks even worse for the months to come, official government figures show Thursday.
The day before, employment figures showed that the number of unemployed increased by 7.5% in 2020 compared to the previous year.
- students -
The situation of students, deprived of an amphitheater for almost three months, increasingly isolated and precarious, is also worrying.
On Wednesday, Jean Castex questioned himself very cautiously during a call to youtubeur Gaspard Guermonprez on the possibility of bringing students "into the exceptions" in the event of re-containment, to fulfill Emmanuel Macron's promise of a return to university one day a week.
At the same time, the variants raise fears of a strong epidemic recovery as the hospital burden remained high at the end of the second epidemic wave, in November, and resumed its progression in January, with more than 27,000 people hospitalized with a diagnosis. Covid-19.
Among them, 3,100 patients are treated in intensive care.
"We are almost today at the level of resuscitations for the month of October. The big difference today is that the dynamic is not exponential, but again the number of resuscitations is increasing, it is factual", insisted Olivier Véran, noting that hospitals are "almost at 60% occupancy" of the initial capacity of sheaves (around 5,000 before the crisis) by Covid patients.
"It seems urgent to me, and we do not have time to wait, to strengthen the measures of social distancing", summarized the epidemiologist and director of research at Inserm Dominique Costagliola, during a situation update in front of the Academy of Sciences.
With 351 new deaths in hospital in 24 hours, 74,456 people affected by Covid-19 have died in France since the start of the epidemic, including 52,218 in hospital, the rest in nursing homes.
© 2021 AFP