Faced with a "critical" epidemic situation in France, the authorities intensified, on Saturday March 27, checks at airports, stations and road tolls to enforce the ban on travel, measures far below the stricter restrictions that demand number of experts.
Three departments, Rhône, Aube and Nièvre have been subject since midnight Friday to the restrictive measures already in force in 16 departments, including Paris and its region.
On the program: no trips over 10 km without exemption, no leaving the territory without a compelling reason, shops closed and half-classes in high school.
At the same time, 24 other departments are under increased vigilance.
In the rest of the country, a curfew is in effect from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Everywhere, bars, restaurants, cultural places remain closed.
While the third wave of Covid-19 continues to rise, leaving the country in a "critical" situation, according to Prime Minister Jean Castex, the authorities are stepping up checks at airports and tolls.
Controls accentuated "at peak hours"
Saturday morning, Gare Montparnasse in Paris, "a dozen teams are mobilized against two to three in normal times, explains to AFP a police captain, who specifies that the controls will be accentuated" at rush hour ".
Maëlle, 22, is leaving for Lorient, in Brittany.
A nurse "in Covid reinforcement" in Paris, she returns to see her family for a few days.
She waited until the last moment to take her ticket, fearing that this trip would be forbidden to her: "I have an AP-HP paper, and, on my laptop, I completed the certificate by checking the box" travel between home and the place of exercise of professional activity ".
Thursday, the head of state Emmanuel Macron, who refused any "mea culpa" after his refusal to confine the country in January despite the forecasts of the experts, had indicated that the weeks to come would be "difficult".
A defense council is to be held Wednesday evening to decide on a possible tougher sanctions.
In this context, the debate on a new postponement of the regional and departmental elections scheduled for June 13 and 20 has been revived.
The executive indicated that he would comply "strictly" with the opinion of the scientific council, which must in principle submit its recommendations to Matignon on Sunday.
The number of patients in intensive care rose to 4,766 Friday evening, still approaching the peak of the second wave in the fall (4,900).
The bar of 200,000 new weekly cases has been crossed.
A total of 94,302 people have died since the start of the epidemic.
"Necessary to contain strictly, as in March 2020"
Pushed by the English variant, considered more contagious and more virulent, the epidemic progressed almost everywhere in France in March, a scenario predicted by epidemiologists from January.
It would take confinement "at least one month from this weekend", according to one of them, Eric D'Ortenzio, quoted Saturday in the columns of the newspaper Le Parisien.
"According to my models, it would be necessary to confine strictly, as in March 2020, at least for six weeks", adds in the same journal Mircea Sofonea, lecturer in epidemiology at the University of Montpellier.
Objective: to find an incidence rate below 5,000 new cases per day, the threshold set by Emmanuel Macron in November.
With AFP
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