No national restriction but a general alert.
The Prime Minister said Thursday evening that
"the situation has deteriorated over the past few days".
"The virus has been gaining ground again for a week (...) Something is happening
,
"
continued Jean Castex at a press conference during which he announced that he had placed
20 departments
under
"enhanced surveillance".
.
All those of Île-de-France, a large part of Hauts-de-France and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur as well as the departments of Rhône, Drôme, Moselle and Meurthe-et- Moselle as well as Eure-et-Loir.
As the variants progress, the head of government indicated that the English variant is particularly present in our territory.
It is
"Diffuses at low noise and is likely to produce, at some point, another epidemic outbreak because it is more contagious"
.
Read also:
Covid-19: the map of the 10 departments most affected by the epidemic
However, there is no question of activating general containment, as some health professionals suggest.
"The very hard confinements carried out by some of our neighbors did not allow them to reach the 'zero Covid' objective"
, insisted Jean Castex, thus keeping the course set at the end of January by the Head of State.
Priority is given to territorialized management of the epidemic.
On the model of the announcements made this week concerning Nice and Dunkirk.
Thus, in the aforementioned departments, the Prime Minister asked the prefects to initiate
"consultations with elected officials" in
order
"to consider braking measures"
, such as confinement at weekends.
"Right balance"
"An intermediate measure, which we hope will make it possible to curb the observed trend."
At the end of the discussions, and
"if and only if the situation continues to deteriorate",
restrictions will take effect from the weekend of March 6.
The Prime Minister promised that
"the search for the right balance
" has
"always been and will remain the backbone of action"
of the executive.
Adding:
"Containment is a lever to which we must resort when we cannot do otherwise (...) We must do everything to delay it to allow the vaccination time to produce effects."
Read also:
Confining the weekend, an effective measure in the face of Covid-19?
Despite the increase in Covid-19 cases, Jean Castex made a point of drawing up a happy prospect.
First by talking about vaccination, which is starting to bear fruit.
"We note that the virus circulates less in the elderly than in the general population",
while the average age of vaccinated people is 72 years in France, against 65 years in Germany and 55 years in Italy.
The same morning, he went with his Minister of Health to a Parisian health center to congratulate himself on the acceleration of the deployment of the vaccination campaign, with the distribution of the AstraZeneca vaccine by general practitioners to the French of 50 -65 years with at least one comorbidity.
Read also:
Covid-19: do population flows at the borders promote the spread of the virus?
Jean Castex also confirmed the
"imminent arrival"
of monoclonal antibodies in France.
These are treatments that
"could prevent the onset of severe forms of the disease
.
"
Although the French are struggling to see the end of the tunnel and weariness and discouragement are growing, Jean Castex imagines a more serene situation from
“the end of spring”.