Coronavirus: France puts 20 regions “under surveillance …

From Paris

The French executive continues to seek the unfathomable formula to coexist with covid-19 without completely shutting down the country. The pandemic has been cruel to all the options that have been put into practice and the government today is faced with the limited results of a policy that has been set as a course to adopt new restrictions without decreeing a general reclassification as in 2020. Closure of bars and restaurants, curfew from 8 a.m., then delayed to 6 p.m., closure of shopping centers and other padlock measures are starting to seem insufficient today.

The virus and its variants have spread so rapidly that the government on Thursday announced another anti-Covid device. French Prime Minister Jean Castex acknowledged that “the situation continues to deteriorate, we will take measures which will take effect during the week of March 6”. The executive has put twenty regions of France “under enhanced surveillance” and will announce next week the extent of the restrictions planned for March 6.

The approaching device concerns the whole of Ile de France (where Paris is located) as well as the regions of the Rhône, the mouths of the Rhône, a good part of the Hauts de France, the Drône, the Moselle, the Meurthe-et -Moselle, Eure-et-Loir, the Nord, the Oise, the Pas-de-Calais and the Somme. The extension of these regions covers the country from North to South. It is very likely that in March the measures will be similar to those already in force in Nice and Dunkirk, where it was decided to apply local lockdowns during the weekend. Dunkirk is located on the coast, exactly opposite England and is a very heavily trafficked port, while Nice is the fifth largest city in France and one of the most important on the Mediterranean coast.

With this strategy, the government territorializes the management of the health crisis instead of implementing it at the national level. The prospect of a new general confinement is not excluded, but the government is doing everything possible to prevent it. In recent weeks, some optimism has prevailed within the executive, but this has been diluted with the advance of the pandemic, in particular the British variant, which is already affecting more than half of the cases detected . However, the situation contains paradoxes. While it is true that there are regions where the levels of spread are worrying, France does not offend for the moment the explosion of contamination which was planned two weeks ago.

The numbers, however, continue to rise. Public health has counted 140,000 new cases in the last 7 days against less than 130,000 the previous week. There are 26,000 hospitalized patients and 3,400 in intensive care, far from the 7,000 in the first wave and 4,900 in the second. In sum, the pandemic is hiding in some regions and jumping in others. According to figures presented by Jean Castex, the last 24 hours have been very alarming with a peak of more than 30,000 cases recorded on Wednesday February 24, “a figure that we had not reached since November”, admitted the head of government .

President Emmanuel Macron faces criticism for his uncertain commitment to design partial and local, non-global containment plans, for not having acted urgently in the regions in a state of alert (Nice and Dunkrque). This Thursday transcended a 113-page note issued at the end of January by the scientific committee which advises the government whose members advocated “strict confinement” for a period of four weeks during the month of February. “Strict containment as in March and April (2020) would be a measure capable of greatly reducing epidemic circulation,” the committee wrote. The government ignored the recommendation and opted for another path which also failed to produce the desired results.

The future will remain a locked country. Nothing allows to contemplate a clear horizon. On the contrary, when asked when the French could expect the measures to be less severe, Castex replied that it was not possible “for the moment to consider easing measures” . Castex mentioned “the end of spring” (end of June) as a possible deadline to lighten the devices. The government has gone from optimism to disappointment over the weeks. Towards the end of January, Macron ruled out a nationwide lockdown and instead decided to enforce a 6 p.m. curfew along with other accompanying provisions to limit the spread of the pandemic. At the beginning of February, the indicators started to drop and with them the confidence of the government and the certainty of having chosen the right option increased. After a week, the incidence of the virus had fallen by 2%. Now, the month of March begins in complete uncertainty due to the accelerated regional rallies of covid-19. The virus continued to progress in the two territories: health and political management of the health crisis.