Macron signals end to France’s lockdown
President also allows Paris cafes to serve customers indoors, while Germany’s R-rate rises to 1.09
Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, has announced that all children can return to schools, nurseries and daycare centres next month, ending formal social distancing but avoiding close contact where possible.
He also gave Paris restaurants and cafés the green light to open fully and serve customers indoors from today in a televised address to the nation last night. Paris was the last part of mainland France still classified as a higher risk “orange zone”.
EMMANUEL MACRON has announced that all children can return to schools, nurseries and day-care centres next month, ending social distancing but avoiding close contact where possible.
The French President also gave Paris restaurants and cafés the green light to open fully and serve customers indoors from today in a televised address to the nation last night.
Paris was the last part of mainland France still classified as a higher risk “orange zone”, but has now joined the rest of the country in being considered a “green zone” where the spread of the coronavirus is under control. Many schools have already reopened, but had to halve class sizes because of France’s one-metre social distancing rule.
Meanwhile Germany’s R-rate, the crucial metric used to determine how rapidly the coronavirus is spreading, increased above one yesterday, days before the country is set to launch its tracing app.
The news has given rise to concerns that Germany, which won praise for its response to the crisis, may have relaxed lockdown restrictions too soon.
Yesterday morning, the daily R-rate across Germany was 1.02. More worrying for authorities is the seven-day Rrate, which provides a more stable and reliable indication of how the virus is spreading by aggregating data over a week-long period. That figure stood at 1.09 yesterday morning – the first time it has risen above one since the metric was introduced in mid-may.
It is not clear exactly what would have caused such an increase but some of the most significant outbreaks have occurred in the central state of Thuringia, which relaxed coronavirus measures in mid-may, earlier than many other areas, and ended contact restrictions entirely on Saturday.
There have been outbreaks in the Thuringian town of Sonneberg, as well as in neighbouring Hersfeld-rotenburg, Göttingen and Coburg.
Lockdown measures vary in each of Germany’s 16 states. Large gatherings remain banned across the country, but bars, restaurants, sports clubs and public transport services have reopened. Recent weeks have also seen dozens of rallies across the country. The increase in infections comes as Germany prepares to roll out its contact tracing app tomorrow. The Corona-warn-app has been delayed due to a dispute about privacy and data storage. Under the original plan, data would be stored on a central server.
Under the new system, data will be stored on each user’s handset and encrypted before being uploaded centrally, ensuring that information relating to app users will not be accessible.