Late Monday morning, the prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes must announce new restrictions, going as far as strict local confinement, to curb the coronavirus epidemic.

Faced with the procrastination of the authorities, who are slow to decide at the highest level of the State, some Nice people no longer hide their exasperation.

They were to be fixed on Sunday evening, they will finally have to wait until Monday, at the end of the morning.

The people of Nice are still waiting to know what additional health measures will be decreed to fight against the spread of the coronavirus.

The number of contaminations is exploding in the Alpes-Maritimes department, with an incidence rate of 700 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, three times higher than at the national level.

A weekend confinement has been considered, but Matignon is dragging on to arbitrate.

And the people of Nice are getting angry.

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"We do not confine, even a single department, lightly"

If the executive is slow to decide, it is because the stakes are high and that it does not want to leave any detail aside.

"We do not confine, even a single department, lightly. It is normal that the decision may take time", justifies Matignon.

After nearly three hours of consultation on Saturday with various local players, the prefect submitted his proposals to the executive on Sunday.

For the elected officials of the territory, one hypothesis holds the rope, it is that of a targeted containment on weekends.

They also evoke a diminished gauge in stores, and the widespread wearing of the mask.

But a ministerial adviser wondered: "if we close shops on weekends, isn't it better to close completely?"

The idea is to avoid "obscure choices" he continues, recalling the closure of so-called non-essential departments in supermarkets.

"If we play hide and seek - we close, we open, we close, we open - we don't get out of it"

But these procrastination are not always well experienced by the inhabitants of Nice.

"That they act quickly in fact. What is annoying, it is not knowing in fact, it is to be there: 'are we going to be re-defined?", Annoys thus. Elena, a carer who walks her dog on the Promenade des Anglais.

"We need to see the end of the tunnel a bit, locally or nationally because we can't take it anymore."

It is also tourism professionals who are outraged.

"We can't go on like this. Soon we have Easter, the month of May, and if we play hide and seek - we close, we open, we close, we open - we can't do it", plague Thus Noël Ajouri is president of the UMIH, organization of the hotel and restaurant trades, in Nice.

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"We have the impression that we are serving as a pilot department"

Especially since the arrival of the Minister of Health Olivier Véran on Saturday caused bad press on the Côte d'Azur.

Here, hoteliers have suffered cancellations.

"For 48 hours, we have already recorded 35 cancellations, that is to say 48 canceled nights," says Eric Trolliard, manager of the Aston La Scala hotel.

"We have the impression that we are the department that pays for the others. Other departments are as affected as us, such as Moselle, for example, but we have the impression that we are serving as a pilot department on this which may be weekend lockdown or permanent lockdown. "

A confinement limited to Nice would indeed be a first in metropolitan France, and it could pave the way for similar measures in other territories.

The executive, however, denies any change in strategy.

Even if until then, the choice of local containment, although several times claimed, has, except overseas, always been postponed.

Hence what may sound like an excess of caution on the part of the government.