This Friday, France begins a new national confinement to try to stop the new coronavirus, a drastic decision that the Government had to take due to the failure of other measures, such as the curfew in the regions.
The country is the second in Europe, after Ireland, to apply a new national confinement, which in this case will initially extend for a month, until December 1st.
France has already registered 36,020 deaths and 1.28 million positive cases due to SARS-CoV-2, with an increasingly high rate of hospitalizations and hospitalizations in intensive care.
The Paris region had record congestion last night, with 730 kilometers of car lines.
On Wednesday, the lines reached 400 kilometers in the same region, traffic officials said, saying that tens of thousands of people left the capital and its periphery to pass the confinement at their places of origin or second homes.
“I understand that attitude. The confinement is extremely hard,” Valerie Pecrésse, president of the Paris regional council, told France Info radio today.
This morning, there were only 24 kilometers of congestion in accessing the capital, an unusually low number.
The streets of Paris are much quieter than usual, with a noticeable decrease in the circulation of private vehicles and, above all, people who went shopping are seen on the sidewalks.
The confinement that begins today is milder than what the country experienced between March and May last.
Citizens will be able to go an hour a day, at most one kilometer from home, to walk or play sports, with kindergartens and primary and secondary schools open.
Weddings and funerals can be celebrated, although with very limited attendance (maximum six and 30 people, respectively).
The establishments that receive public and non-essential commerce will close. The government has promised to review the situation after two weeks to see if it is feasible to reopen some of these deals.
The Executive chaired by Emmanuel Macron tries to ensure that confinement has the least possible impact on an economy that is expected to fall 11% this year.
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire announced on Thursday that the state will spend € 15 billion for each month of confinement on aid to affected companies, self-employed workers and partial unemployment benefits.
Seven out of ten French people approve of the confinement, according to a survey published by the newspaper Le Figaro, although only a small majority (52%) support the closure of non-essential businesses.
The Interior Minister has already guaranteed that this weekend there will be flexibility in the application of measures to ensure that families who left for the autumn school holidays can return to their homes in the face of the resumption of classes on Monday.
Flexibility will also be extended to facilitate visits to cemeteries next Sunday, November 1st.
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 1.1 million deaths and more than 44.5 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report made by the French agency AFP.
In Portugal, 2,428 people died from 132,616 confirmed cases of infection, according to the most recent bulletin from the Directorate-General for Health.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
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