The lockdown will affect the 16 hardest-hit departments, including Paris and its surroundings
Credit: Kiran Ridley/Getty Images Europe
Paris and parts of northern and southern France will enter a lockdown for at least four weeks, starting this weekend, in an attempt to stem a third Covid wave fuelled by contagious variants, Jean Castex, the prime minister announced on Thursday.
The government insisted the measures were not as harsh as the previous two lockdowns but were instead a "third way".
Mr Castex said the clampdown followed a "clear acceleration" in the spread of the virus – with 35,000 new cases registered on Thursday – that had brought hospitals in some areas to saturation point.
"The situation is deteriorating," he told a news conference. "The moment has come to go further, with more demanding restrictions where things are most critical."
The lockdown will affect the 16 hardest-hit departments including Paris and its surroundings, the northern Hauts-de-France, Eure and Seine-Maritime and also the southern Alpes-Maritimes. It takes effect from midnight on Friday.
Schools will stay open and people will be allowed to exercise outdoors within a 10 km (6.2 mile) radius of their homes. People living in the affected areas will not be allowed to travel to other regions without a compelling reason. The 6pm curfew currently place will be moved to 7pm, starting on Saturday and nationwide, Mr Castex said.
The measures were stricter than had previously been touted by the French media, which had speculated that the government would limit a lockdown to weekends as it had in the Hauts-de-France and Nice in recent weeks.
Jean Castex delivers news of the new lockdown measures on Thursday
Credit: Martin Bureau/Pool via Reuters
However, Mr Castex said these measures, while initially effective, had proved "insufficient" to reverse worrying rises in infections. He insisted that "while this is not good news" for people in those regions, the restrictions were less severe this time.
"These confinement measures will not be a repeat of those we imposed in March and last November," he said. "We are adopting a third way, a way that should allow braking [of the virus infections] without locking up."
Only shops selling essential goods can remain open, something Mr Castex said extended to music and bookshops in response to a backlash to their closure in previous lockdowns.
While it was important to be able to go outside, he said that did not mean "going to friends’ houses" and asked French companies to "push teleworking to the full", saying that a government aim of at least four days out of five at home was "still from being reached".
Mr Castex said the measures could be prolonged or extended to other departments but also curtailed if progress was made, particularly in ramping up France’s sluggish vaccination rate. He said the administering of vaccines was speeding up, with 5.7 million people having had at least one dose, "one of the highest in the EU".
He gave a hard sell to the AstraZeneca vaccine in the wake of its green light from the European Medicines Agency following fears it causes blood clots, saying France would lift its suspension on Friday and "immediately start up the vaccination campaign again" as it was "safe and effective" with a "positive risk-reward ratio".
Mr Castex said he would be having the jab on Friday afternoon "to show that we can have full confidence". He insisted France was still on target to reach its goal of 10, 20, 30 – 10 million people vaccinated by mid-April, 20 million by mid-May and 30 million by June.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has resisted imposing a nationwide lockdown this year in the face of what officials acknowledge is the third wave of the pandemic, which has already killed over 91,000 people in France.
But with emergency wards in hospitals in Paris overwhelmed, with around 1,200 patients in intensive care, he had little choice but to toughen measures.
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