To curb the Covid epidemic, Nice and Dunkirk inaugurated on Saturday a new variant of restrictions, the confinement of Saturdays and Sundays, which lurks in other large cities and departments if the situation deteriorates.
Prime Minister Jean Castex also asked the prefects of the 20 departments where the Covid-19 epidemic threatens to flare up on Saturday to strengthen the controls of the measures in force, including curfews, recalling that the objective is to “Do everything to avoid national confinement”.
But other territories could follow next week, because the epidemic is gaining ground again, reinforced by the variants of the coronavirus, including the English variant, considered to be more contagious and which represented 49% of new cases of contamination during the week of February 15, according to Public Health France.
A meeting on Saturday morning by videoconference between Jean Castex, the ministers of Health and the Interior, the prefects of the 20 departments and the directors general of the regional health agencies of the areas affected by the rapid rise in indicators, was specifically intended to provide the framework for the consultations which will then be carried out with the elected representatives of these territories, covering in particular the Bouches-du-Rhône and the Rhône, as well as the eight departments of the Paris region.
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Partial confinement in Nice: the Promenade des Anglais deserted
Discussions began in a tense manner with the city of Paris, which proposed Thursday evening a three-week confinement and not only on weekends, before making it a simple "working hypothesis" on Friday.
Accused in turn of having ignored the consultation, the PS mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo must bring together all the mayors of the district on Monday.
In Ile-de-France, where the English variant is predominant, the incidence rate has continued to climb, going from 240 to 312 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over seven days, between February 14 and 23, and reaching more than 360 in Seine-Saint-Denis.
At the national level, the burden on hospitals fell throughout the month of February but it remains high, with 25,000 patients currently hospitalized, including more than 3,400 in intensive care (against 7,000 and 4,900 at the peaks of the first and second waves).
The vaccination campaign is still progressing slowly, against a background of limited supplies, but it has started to produce its effects in nursing homes and in those over 75 years old, Public Health France noted in its last bulletin.
