After Nice, Dunkirk: hit by an “alarming” upsurge in the Covid-19 epidemic, the northern agglomeration will in turn be confined at weekends, the government announced on Wednesday, which calls for not to relax efforts faced with a situation which “deteriorates” at the national level.
In this agglomeration of 250,000 inhabitants of which “one in a hundred falls ill every week”, weekend trips will only be possible for certain reasons, non-food stores closed, and the ten largest shopping centers will only operate in “Click-and-go”, said on the spot the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran.
The region will also benefit from an additional allocation of 16,700 doses of vaccines.
These measures, decided after consultation with the local elected officials who approved them, are justified by the epidemic situation “very worrying, even alarming” in Dunkirk. The incidence rate of the disease, fueled by the British variant, is “double what it was at the height of the first and second waves”, and hospitals are saturated, justified the minister.
The mayor (DVG) of Dunkirk, Patrice Vergriete, said he “understood” the government’s decision. “We wanted to give prevention a chance, but the general situation is more difficult, the population must understand it,” said the elected official.
“Psychologically, it’s hard,” reacted to AFP, a Dunkirk teacher, met when she was returning home just before the 6pm curfew. “Being confined will deprive us of our freedoms yet again, while we are very careful, we wear the mask all the time.”
To help curb the epidemic, “the sale of alcohol to take away as well as the consumption of alcohol on the public highway” will also be banned throughout the Nord department, and border controls reinforced, announced. Mr. Véran.
– “heterogeneous” situation –
In the rest of France, the epidemic situation is also “very worrying in a dozen departments”, alerted government spokesman Gabriel Attal after the Council of Ministers. “All our efforts must continue” to “avoid having to decide on a new national confinement”, he added.
“The epidemic situation is deteriorating in our country”, insisted in Dunkirk Olivier Véran, stressing that “the number of diagnoses is now increasing day by day”. “We erased in one week the two consecutive weeks of decline that we had recorded so far,” he lamented.
Asked about the possibility of relaxing the restrictions in the territories where the virus circulates less actively, the minister acknowledged that the situation was “heterogeneous”, and that it was necessary “to give prospects” to the French. However, only a small part of the national territory is below the alert threshold, and a locally positive trend can quickly deteriorate, warned Mr. Véran.
In Dunkirk, local elected officials had alerted the government on February 12 on the rise of the wave, carried in this city close to England and the Belgian border by the English variant, which represents more than 70% of contaminations.
But the executive then declined their request for an early closure of a week of colleagues and high schools, before the holidays, arousing criticism from the mayor, who now welcomes the dialogue with the government.
– “The pace is accelerating” –
The situation is also being monitored in the rest of the department and the neighboring Pas-de-Calais, where the signals have turned red with an incidence rate of 340 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
Vigilance also in Ile-de-France, where the same rate has increased to 277 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
In terms of the vaccination campaign, supplies remain limited, but the number of people vaccinated in France has now exceeded 2.6 million (for at least one dose) and vaccination among general practitioners and in companies should start Thursday with the AstraZeneca.
But in a study published Wednesday, the Institut Pasteur judges that without additional restrictions, the vaccination campaign will not prevent a jump in hospitalizations.
On Wednesday, the numbers of hospitalizations and patients in intensive care were stable, according to figures released in the evening by Public Health France. Hospitals had 25,614 Covid-19 patients (including 1,636 new patients), against 25,660 (including 1,780 new) on Tuesday.
The rate of hospital deaths appears to be slowing, to 278 over the past 24 hours, against 314 Tuesday and 311 the previous Wednesday. The number of people who have died in France since the start of the epidemic a year ago is now 85,321.
lc-cmk-ab-fmp / cbn
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