Paris (AFP)
The epidemic situation is "worrying" but the government is playing a last card to avoid a third confinement by strengthening several restrictive measures, a surprise choice which is not unanimous.
Given the numbers of the epidemic which are deteriorating day by day, "the question of containment is a legitimate one," the Prime Minister said Friday evening during an unexpected speech at the end of a Council defense around Emmanuel Macron.
But "we know the very heavy impact on all levels" and "we can still give ourselves a chance to avoid confinement", assured Jean Castex, wanting "to do everything possible to avoid" this third confinement which seemed inevitable in recent days.
The government has decided in particular to close the borders to countries outside the EU from midnight on Sunday, "unless there is a compelling reason", to close non-food shopping centers of more than 20,000 m2 as of this Sunday and to strengthen the gauges of frequentation in all supermarkets.
- "Go back to jump less well" -
"I find it particularly dangerous to play on the psychological rope of the French by raising the threat of containment in recent days to finally send on the fly an embarrassed Prime Minister to make minor announcements," the latter tweeted.
The choice not to reconfine, in any case not immediately, also questions the medical community, while many health experts pleaded for a more radical decision in the face of the spread of the more contagious English variant, which now represents 10% of cases in France.
"The measures on the health plan are almost anecdotal," lamented Saturday on BFMTV Professor Gilbert Deray, head of the nephrology service at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital.
"It's not going backwards to jump better, it's going backwards to jump less well: the more you go back, the more it goes up - and it will go up - and the harder it will be, the longer it will be", he added.
"It's a balanced strategy", tempered on the same channel Frédéric Adnet, head of emergencies at the Avicenne hospital in Bobigny.
"Currently the hospital is filling up little by little but it is not an exponential increase," he added.
The pressure on the health system is high with 27,270 hospitalized Covid-19 patients, not far from the peaks of the first and second waves (32,000 and 33,000).
Among them, 3,120 patients were in intensive care on Friday, below the peaks of previous waves (4,900 in the fall, 7,000 in the spring).
And the rate of deaths is not decreasing, with 356 deaths in hospital on Friday, bringing the total toll since the start of the epidemic to 75,620.
- Confining during the holidays?
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Faced with this slow but continuous increase, the government has given itself a few extra days, without setting a date, but for some doctors, a re-containment is still inexorable.
"We can clearly see that there is a will to wait, probably to make a decision of additional restrictions consistent with the February holidays", which begins on February 6 for zone A, commented on LCI Bruno Megarbane, head of the medical and toxicological resuscitation service at the Lariboisière hospital in Paris.
"It's going to be a confinement of at least a month, so we have to weigh the necessity," he added.
However, the government's announcements made people happy, especially among small traders who will not join for the moment drinking establishments, restaurants and cultural places closed since the end of October.
The government, "by reconciling health and economic requirements, is drawing lessons from the first confinements. Braking measures rather than too hard confinement which would have caused a collapse of the economy," for his part reacted on Twitter the president of the Medef Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux.
To clarify these new rules, the players in mass distribution and commerce must meet on Saturday with the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire.
While the Prime Minister also announced a tightening of the controls of the 6 p.m. curfew, underground parties and the "illegal opening" of restaurants, some theaters plan to defy the ban on Saturday during an "open theaters" operation. "from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Like other European countries, France must also face a drop in expected deliveries of vaccines, both from Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna or AstraZeneca.
As a result, the government predicts that in February only one million people will receive the first of two necessary injections, after around 1.5 million in January.
© 2021 AFP