The situation is considered extremely worrying in the department.
During a visit to Nice this Saturday, the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, announced to consider a "partial or total confinement" or an "accentuated" curfew in the Alpes-Maritimes, where a very high number of contaminations to the new coronavirus is recorded.
"I ask the prefect to continue the consultation [...] with all the elected representatives of the territory so that, by the end of the weekend, we can take additional measures to protect this population of the Alpes-Maritimes in the face of to this epidemic outbreak.
It could take the form of an accentuation of the curfew or even partial or total confinement, ”said the minister from l'Archet hospital in Nice.
The urgency is there, according to him: "500 people fall ill every day in Nice", he underlined.
The Alpes-Maritimes have the highest incidence rate in mainland France, with around 600 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
Nice, its capital, even counts 751 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, or three times the maximum alert threshold, as well as a positivity rate of 10.3%, against 6% nationally.
During his weekly update Thursday, Olivier Véran had already noted that 30 to 50% of new contaminations in the department were due to the British variant, considered more contagious, without linking it to an outbreak of cases.
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Hospital pressure remains strong in the department: several transfers have also been organized to hospitals in neighboring departments.
Non-Covid operations even had to be deprogrammed to free up places at the Nice University Hospital, already explained Carole Ichai to Parisien Friday, head of the establishment's intensive care unit.
“If the epidemic does not calm down, we will be in trouble,” she said.
