French prime minister Jean Castex announced Friday that France will bar travel to and from non-EU countries and close large shopping centres in a bid to avoid a third Covid-19 lockdown. For some French epidemiologists, the new restrictions won’t be enough to flatten the curve, reports FRANCE 24.
“Our duty is to do all we can to avoid another lockdown,” Castex said in a televised address that laid out new measures to stem the latest wave of French Covid-19 cases. But the government’s surprise decision to not put the country in lockdown has drawn criticism from some of the country’s health professionals.
The new measures ban all but emergency travel to and from non-EU countries from midnight Sunday. People arriving from within the EU have to present a negative PCR Covid-19 test, taken within 72 hours of travelling. Shopping centres larger than 20,000 square metres that do not sell food are to close, and fewer customers will be allowed inside a supermarket at the same time.
France reported 24,393 new Covid-19 infections on Saturday, up from 22,858 the day before, while more than 27,000 patients were in hospital for a fifth straight day.
The rate of daily new infections is lower than when the government ordered the last lockdown in October, but hospitalisation rates are already comparable.
"Everything suggests that a new wave could occur because of the [more contagious British] variant, but perhaps we can avoid it thanks to the measures that we decided early and that the French people are respecting," Health minister Olivier Véran told French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche on Sunday.
He said that the number of new coronavirus cases had barely increased last week, while other indicators – such as traces of the virus detected in waste water – were also reassuring.
"Even when the path is narrow, you need to take it," President Emmanuel Macron was reported as telling ministers at the meeting on Friday.
But some French health experts were unimpressed by the new restrictions.