FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
PARIS – With the sun and 17 degrees, yesterday the Promenade des Anglais was full of citizens and tourists but for Nice it may have been the last Sunday outdoors: Authorities are about to announce weekend confinement, a measure never used before in France.
«The health situation is catastrophic – says Mayor Christian Estrosi -. Only today 17 new hospitalizations, resuscitation is close to saturation, operations are deprogrammed “. The metropolitan area of nearly one million inhabitants is the most affected area of France, in particular the English variant quickly made cases rise and for the first time the government is ready to choose the path of a localized lockdown, only on weekends.
In Nice in the last week they registered 751 new cases per 100 thousand inhabitants, against 190 nationwide. Among the causes, the mayor Estrosi indicates the excess of tourists during the Christmas holidays, “We went from 20 to 120 flights a day”, but there is also the proximity to Italy and the many trips across the border by French people who wanted to take advantage of the restaurants and bars that remained open in Liguria.
The mayor asks for the reinforcements of the national police “to enforce the measures that will be announced”, also because in recent weeks the citizens had begun to show signs of impatience. The restaurant owner made a splash “Poppies” who decided to violate the ban and opened the restaurant for lunch, welcoming customers with the cry of “freedom!”.
In Nice, what experts predict for the end of the month in the rest of France is already happening, that is the overtaking of the British variant, much more contagious, on the coronavirus known a year ago.
Health Minister Olivier Veran paid a visit on Saturday and announced the immediate delivery of 3,500 additional doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, while thousands more doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine will arrive in the coming days. Another factor in the fight against the virus is the start of the winter school holidays, which begin today in Nice.
Closing schools for two weeks could help limit the explosion of cases. Minister Veran announced that upon returning, on March 8, a massive salivary test campaign will be organized in the classrooms, according to Mayor Estrosi “an essential element to reassure teachers and parents and limit the progression of the virus”.
The case of Nice could foreshadow what will happen in the rest of the country later, even if the president Emmanuel Macron he seems quite satisfied with the overall trend and on Friday he gave himself another “8-10 days to decide whether to loosen or tighten the existing measures against the epidemic”.
In videoconference with about ten parliamentarians from his majority, Macron explained: “On January 29 I decided not to declare a new lockdown (when everyone expected it, ed) for two reasons: the social, economic and educational cost, and the uncertainty on the epidemiological model. The choice I made was reasonable and proved to be valid. We did well not to redefine ».
For now, the president aims to strengthen compliance with the “barrier gestures” (behavioral measures, ed), also by launching a challenge to the two famous youtubers Mcfly and Carlito: «If you make a video on barrier gestures and you get 10 million views, I’ll make you shoot at the Elysée». After two days, already passed the two million mark.
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