The French Government alerts to the "recrudescence" of the coronavirus epidemic

The French Prime Minister, Jean Castex, warned this Thursday of the "worsening" of the coronavirus epidemic throughout France, which has led the Government to decree another 19 departments as "red" areas of high virus circulation. Thus, 21 of the 101 departments of France are exposed to the transmission of the virus, according to the authorities. Among those areas is the Paris region. The Executive will do "everything possible" to "avoid a generalized reconfiguration", but for this the population also has to do its part, respecting the barrier gestures and wearing "as much as possible" the mask in public spaces, he stressed.

“The territorial or global reconfinement plans are ready. Our hospital system is also ready for a possible new wave of patients in terms of beds, medicines and resuscitation equipment ”, said Castex at a press conference together with the ministers of Health, Olivier Véran, and Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer. "Our goal however is to do everything possible to avoid reconfinement, especially widespread, as well as a massive influx of patients like the one we saw" in the spring, he added. "That objective is within our reach, if we all mobilize a little," he insisted.

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Véran assured that by the end of September the objective of having a supply of more than one billion masks will have been achieved and that hospitals also have enough resources for three weeks. France is also one of the countries that performs the most tests, some 830,000 a week with the intention of reaching one million "in the short term," he added.

Beyond the statements, perhaps one of the clearest signs of the deterioration of the coronavirus epidemic in France is the return to the prime minister's lengthy presentations and press conferences to explain the situation and the measures adopted by the Government. Castex resumed this Thursday the custom that its predecessor, Édouard Philippe, maintained during the hardest part of the crisis, to, more than make new revelations about the epidemic, insist on security measures and alert the population that it cannot be lowered the guard, as has happened throughout this summer. Infections have multiplied and are returning to crisis rates.

"Sounding the alarm does not mean that we are in a serious situation like at the beginning of the year, we are still very far from that," said Castex, in another attempt by the Government not to provoke a general alarm despite the worsening of the situation. The cumulative incidence in the last two weeks amounts to 70 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, far from the situation in Spain (191 cases), but more serious than that of Germany (20.7) or Italy (17.9) . Since the start of the pandemic, France has accumulated 253,587 coronavirus diagnoses and 30,544 deaths, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.

Regarding the resurgence of the measures, however, there are few news, beyond the fact that from now on the prefects of the red zones have more decision-making capacity. As Castex advanced, in the case of Paris and its surroundings, it has already asked those responsible - the prefect of police, Didier Lallement, the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, and the councilors of the surroundings - to coordinate to decree a imminent mandatory use of masks in all public spaces, whether open or closed, as is already the case in Marseille, the second largest city in France. Until now, the mask is only mandatory in Paris in some streets and areas, which generates a lot of confusion among pedestrians.

Information about the coronavirus

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