Surgeries in France postponed

Two economists suggest new lockdown; minister rejects that

PARIS — Hospitals in the Paris and Marseille regions are delaying some scheduled operations to free up space for COVID-19 patients as the French government tries to stem a rising tide of coronavirus infections, the health minister said Sunday.

As restaurants and bars in Marseille prepared to shut down Sunday night for a week as part of scattered new French virus restrictions, Health Minister Olivier Veran insisted that the country plans no new lockdowns.

Two Nobel Prize-winning economists proposed in Le Monde newspaper this weekend that France lock down its population for the first three weeks of December to allow families to get together safely for the end-ofyear holidays and “save Christmas.”

In response, Veran said on LCI television that “we do not want to confine the country again. Several countries around us made other choices. We don’t want this.”

He urged the French to make an effort to slow the spread of the virus, after health authorities reported 14,000 new infections Saturday amid a mass testing effort. France has reported 31,700 virus-related deaths, the third-highest toll in Europe after Britain and Italy.

While at least 10 percent of French intensive care beds are now occupied with COVID patients, Veran said they’re far from saturation.

In other global developments:

Prince Charles warned that up to 1 million young people may need “urgent help” to protect their futures from the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, the Prince of Wales said that there has “never been a time as uniquely challenging as the present” and that it is a particularly hard time to be young.

He said the crisis is reminiscent of the 1970s, when youth unemployment was one of the pressing issues facing British society.

■ An association of families of coronavirus victims planted what it says are 53,000 small Spanish flags in a Madrid park to honor the dead of the pandemic.

Volunteers placed the flags on a grassy slope overlooking a highway in the capital early on Sunday.

Elsewhere in Madrid, over 1,000 protesters rallied to demand a more vigorous response to the growing second wave of the coronavirus.

■ Italy reported 1,766 more coronavirus cases Sunday, in line with its recent daily increases, but with a smaller number of tests conducted in the past 24 hours.

An additional 17 people died, bringing Italy’s official death toll to 35,835, the highest in Europe after Britain.

Every Italian region reported new cases Sunday with the exception of the small Valle d’aosta region.