Two weeks ago, everything felt normal for most people living in France. But as coronavirus cases climbed, the country became unrecognizable - practically overnight, reports CNBC.
“I haven’t moved from home for the past four, five days, but outside it’s surrealistic,” Gerald Carmont, a 60-year-old Frenchman working in educational services just outside of Paris, told CNBC over the phone. “It’s like you’re living in a death place.”
“There is no life, you get a few food shops that are open, most of them will give you gloves and masks when you enter and you can’t touch anything, the cashiers are protected by glass screens. It’s amazing, and it all happened so quickly because about two weeks ago, everything was normal. And, all of a sudden, the country went down.”
Like many other countries in Europe and increasingly around the world, France has gone into official lockdown, closing all but essential businesses and urging residents to stay indoors, under penalty of fines and arrest.
On Tuesday, France announced further measures to stem human movement in an effort to combat the spread of the virus, which has now killed more than 1,000 people in the country of 67 million. It’s become the fifth country to reach that figure, and has a confirmed case count of more than 22,600, the fourth highest in Europe.