Paris takes its time as shops, business district reawaken

After country’s 26,000 COVID-19 deaths, capital slowly starts recovery.

PARIS — After a two-month freeze, Paris slowly awakened Monday to the world it had lost under lockdown as hairdressers, florists, nail salons and some other businesses reopened — but under mandatory social distancing requirements.

Like a just-awakened sleeping beauty, the City of Light needed to rub its eyes on the first day of relaxed home confinement rules. Shopkeepers trying to recover losses may need to wait days for Parisians to rediscover the daily habits from before the coronavirus halted most public life.

“It’s a bit an act of faith today,” said Edouard Lefebvre, who heads the business district on the Champs-Elysees Avenue, packed with crowds of locals and foreign tourists in normal times.

Only half of the avenue’s shops were open Monday, Lefebvreon said, reflecting the extensive preparations needed to safely receive customers and the hesitant steps many people took toward pre-pandemic routines.

“Clients won’t come back on day one. It takes time to get used to coming back to the Champs-Elysees, to come back to Paris,” Lefebvre said.

Restaurants and bars are still waiting to learn when they will be back in business and cafe life can resume under the French government’s phased-in lifting of restrictions it imposed to stem the country’s coronavirus outbreak.

France was hit hard by COVID19, recording more than 26,000 virus-related deaths as of Sunday night. The virus still is circulating.

Parisians donned heavy coats against a blustering wind and colder weather to stroll through their neighborhoods without the permission slips they had recently needed for just a few permitted purposes: food shopping, short jogs and imperative business.

Lefebvre bemoaned what he said has been an 18-month-long economic “disaster” for Paris, from the weekly demonstrations by yellow vest protesters in 2019 to a major transportation strike over pension reform, and then the coronavirus crisis early this year.

“Despite this, we are opening full of hope, even if it will take a long time to reconquer,” he said. “It’s important for a city like Paris to live again.”

FRANCOIS MORI / ASSOCIATED PRESS Cars drive Monday along the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, with the Arc de Triomphe in the background, as clothiers, coiffures and other businesses large and small reopen and the French begin leaving their homes for the first time in two months.