France in 3rd lockdown
7pm curfew as infections surge amid Macron’s jabs flip-flop
EMMANUEL Macron plunged France into a third lockdown last night as a further wave of coronavirus infections looks set to overrun the country’s hospitals.
School and shops will close and there will be a national curfew for the next month.
The French president blamed the ‘British variant’ for creating ‘a pandemic inside a pandemic’ that was more contagious and ‘more deadly.’
‘Soon, nearly 100,000 families will be in mourning,’ he said, referring to France’s climbing coronavirus death rate, which stood at 95,337 last night. ‘We will lose control if we do not move now.’
With cases spiralling to more than 40,000 a day, and intensive care wards overflowing, the 7pm curfew, already in place in the worst-hit regions such as Paris and the north, will now apply across all of mainland France.
The rules, which mostly apply from Saturday, will see non-essential stores closed nationwide. Other measures include a domestic travel ban between regions without an essential reason, due to kick in after the Easter weekend, and the closure of schools for the next three weeks.
‘It is the best solution to slow down the virus,’ Mr Macron said in a televised address, as he insisted that France had succeeded in keeping schools open longer than neighbours such as Britain.
‘The epidemic is accelerating, and we are likely to lose control, so we must find a new way of reacting. We must therefore set ourselves a new framework for the coming months.
‘We are involved in a race. Propagation of a new variant that was identified by our British neighbours must be dealt with.’
The French finance ministry said the new lockdown would see 150,000 businesses close nationwide, at an estimated cost of more than £9billion for every month their doors are shut.
The lockdown represents an embarrassing U-turn for Mr Macron, who ignored a call from his scientific advisers to introduce a tougher lockdown at the end of
January. But the French president took a gamble on curfews and local restrictions in the hope of giving the economy a chance to recover from a deep slump.
Just last week, he even refused to apologise for his handling of the country’s coronavirus strategy.
‘I can tell you that I have no mea culpa to offer, no remorse, no acknowledgement of failure,’ Mr Macron said on Thursday.
But the French president, who faces reelection next year, is running out of options to stop the spread of the virus. All of France’s restaurants, bars, gyms, cinemas and museums have been closed since October.
In Paris and other regions where the virus is spreading rapidly, residents already have extra restrictions on movement and non-essential stores are closed.
France’s healthcare system, a source of national pride, is close to being overwhelmed by the rise in infections.
More than 5,000 patients were in intensive care on Tuesday, the first time in 11 months that the figure has been that high, while daily new infections have doubled since February.
The National Council of the Order of Doctors urged Mr Macron yesterday in an open letter in the Liberation newspaper to impose ‘a real lockdown wherever necessary’. Patrick Bouet, the medic who leads the organisation wrote: ‘It appears that we have lost control of the epidemic. The virus is winning.’
Mr Macron had been banking on France’s vaccination drive to reopen the economy. But its rollout has been hampered by a lack of jabs, and flip-flopping by the president over the efficacy of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.
France is also one of the most vaccinesceptical countries in Europe – fertile ground for anti-vaxxers spreading online misinformation. Less than 12 per cent of the population have received at least one vaccine dose.
Despite the measures, it is unlikely France will be immediately put on the UK’s travel ‘red list’. A Whitehall source said: ‘The situation in France is a concern but it is no more of a concern because a lockdown has been introduced.’
‘We have lost control, the virus is winning’