The departments of the “green” category are those which show less circulation of the coronavirus, thus offering a passport for a wider deconfinement, unlike the “red” departments. This card has just been revealed Thursday evening by the Ministry of Health.
To adapt the deconfinement to local realities, this card is made according to three criteria. This card may change every day before being “crystallized” on May 7, each department then being fixed on the “red” or “green” category in which it will be classified after May 11. The update of this map will be presented every evening by Jérôme Salomon, to allow departments to prepare.
How the departments will be decided
The first criterion taken into account will be "the rate of new cases in the population over a period of seven days", one of the data which makes it possible to assess whether the coronavirus is still actively circulating.
The second factor will be the strain on hospital capacity, assessed at regional level. It will be a question of seeing, according to the rate of use of intensive care and intensive care beds, "the capacity of the hospital system to have recovered from this first wave", said Edouard Philippe Wednesday, during the session questions to the government.
Last parameter taken into account: the level of preparation of each territory to be able to test all the patients presenting symptoms and to detect the people having been in contact with confirmed cases of Covid - 20 to 25 on average -, condition sine qua non to avoid a too rapid resumption of the epidemic.
The government will also verify the "capacity of the brigades" formed to identify contact cases "to effectively ascend the chains of transmission".
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Green or red, what will it actually change?
If the deconfinement will take “a more strict form” in the departments classified “red”, “there is […] a majority of obligations which will be common to the green departments and to the red departments”, recognized the Prime Minister on Wednesday.
In his speech Tuesday, however, he reserved the return of students to college, from May 18, as well as the reopening of parks and gardens to "departments where the circulation of the virus is very low".
The color "red" or "green" will also serve as a guide for local authorities (prefectures, rectorates, mayors, etc.) to take their decisions, for example on the reopening of primary schools.