Dunkirk: confinement on weekends, sale and consumption of alcohol prohibited in the city center

Dunkirk and its agglomeration will be confined at weekends, Véran announces

In his speech following his visit to Dunkirk on Wednesday, the Minister of Health described‘”alarming” the situation in the city. “One in 100 people fall ill with Covid every week in Dunkirk and in the Hauts-de-Flandres community of municipalities “. The incidence is now twice as high as it was at the height of the first and second waves, adds Olivier Véran.

• “We absolutely must protect the population and stop the spread of the virus”, says the minister. “At the end of our visit, I ask the prefect to make the following decisions: in Dunkirk, from Friday evening until Monday morning, confinement will be adapted on weekends and therefore from this weekend” . And this for two weeks.

• Travel will remain possible for certain reasons such as essential or medical purchases, he says. Non-food stores will be closed, as well as shopping centers with an area greater than 5000m². Purchases in “click and take” may however be possible.

• “The sale of alcohol to take away as well as the consumption of alcohol on public roads are prohibited” in the Dunkirk conurbation, announces Olivier Véran following his visit to the municipality of the North.

The prefect must communicate by Thursday on the dates of application of this measure, as well as those concerning the restoration of health protocols on the markets or the strengthening of the wearing of masks in urban areas, announced by the minister.

>> Update at 2 p.m. A degraded situation and “very worrying in ten departments”, according to Attal.

The situation in the fight against Covid-19 “is degrading” and “is very worrying in ten departments”Government spokesman Gabriel Attal said on Wednesday after the Council of Ministers. This degradation “imposes rapid and strong measures”, said the spokesperson, indicating that Prime Minister Jean Castex would hold a press conference on Thursday. He also warned that “all our efforts must continue” for “avoid having to decide on a new national confinement”.

• There is no “obviously” no “certainty that we will succeed”, most “If we considered that today a containment was necessary, we would have decided on a containment”, he added.

But, in certain areas where the situation has deteriorated markedly, “rapid and strong measures” are required “faced with the imminent risks before us”, he insisted. “We showed it last week in Moselle, we showed it this weekend in the Alpes-Maritimes: as soon as the situation requires it, we do not hesitate to take rapid and strong measures and decisions “.

The Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, is due to go this Wednesday afternoon to Dunkirk, where the incidence rate has exceeded 900 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, while the national average stands at 105 and the threshold d The alert is set at 50. In the northern conurbation, decisions to restrict movement, such as confinement on Saturdays and Sundays, as applied in the Alpes-Maritimes, are expected in the coming hours.

“We can do it in other territories if it becomes necessary”, said Gabriel Attal. “Our course of action has not changed: first targeted responses, precise braking measures and extend them if necessary”, he added.

>> Gabriel Attal, government spokesperson, provides a live update on the health situation in France

The situation in the fight against Covid-19 “is degrading” and “is very worrying in ten departments”, says government spokesman Gabriel Attal after the Council of Ministers. This degradation “imposes rapid and strong measures”, said the spokesperson, indicating that Prime Minister Jean Castex would hold a press conference on Thursday.

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Towards a reconfinement of Dunkirk and the North?

The Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, is expected in the afternoon to set up with local elected officials new restrictions, whether voluntary, as desired by the mayors of the Urban Community, or imposed, as on the coast. des Alpes-Maritimes, subject to confinement for the next two weekends.

Of “additional braking measures” are desired by the government while the agglomeration has a record incidence rate – 900 cases per 100,000 inhabitants on Monday over the last seven days – more than four times higher than the national average (205) and worse than in the Nice metropolis.

A press point is scheduled for the end of the afternoon, even if it is not certain, according to the prefecture, that the decisions are announced there. For the Dunkirk resident Didier Château, 76, the time has come to “take the bull by the horns!”, especially since, as in the rest of France, the mild weather brings walkers into the streets. But the elected officials of the urban community, who consulted on Tuesday, would prefer them “give one last chance” the city to escape confinement, at the cost of a kind of voluntary self-containment.

While stressing that he would not oppose a putting under a bell, the mayor DVG, Patrice Vergriete, advocated a burst of civility of his citizens called to respect the rule of “zero gathering” until mid-March, family reunions and friends included.

“Local approach”

Proposals to which “adheres” Eric Glucksman, president of the association of traders in the city center of Dunkirk, who hopes to avoid the “new disaster” of an imposed confinement. In any case, the exceptional screening campaign launched last Thursday in particular at the Kursaal, the city’s convention center where a thousand people came to be tested — allowing 83 positive cases to be counted — will be extended until Friday, a indicated the ARS.

A boost in vaccines is also expected, after 2,400 additional doses last week. The local elected officials had alerted the government on February 12 on the rise of the wave, carried in this city located in front of England and not far from the Belgian border, by the English variant, which represents more than 70% of the contaminations . But the executive then declined their request for an early closure of a week of colleagues and high schools, before the holidays, sparking criticism from the mayor.

He now welcomes the dialogue with the government. “The logic is to take a local approach, to do it on a case-by-case basis, in consultation, because the situations are different within the regions”, Emmanuel Macron’s entourage explained Tuesday, on the sidelines of a visit by the Head of State to Côte d’Or.

“We always arrive a little too late. The rise in cases goes back several weeks already”, regretted on BFM TV Yves Buisson, epidemiologist, president of the Covid-19 group at the National Academy of Medicine. Measurements should be “adapted to the fastest form of the virus, and therefore in this case to the British variant” Jean-Stéphane Dhersin, deputy scientific director of INSMI at CNRS, pointed out to him on the same antenna.

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.

No explosion

Vigilance also in Ile-de-France, where the same rate has increased to 277 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. The Prime Minister paid a surprise visit on Tuesday evening to the Argenteuil hospital center (Val d’Oise). “My obsession is to prevent people from arriving at your home. There is the hard method, confinement etc. But the best way is to get vaccinated”, pleaded Jean Castex.

While supplies remain limited, the vaccination campaign has affected more than 2.6 million people (for at least one dose) and vaccination among general practitioners and companies is due to start Thursday with AstraZeneca. However, France has not at this stage suffered the explosion feared for several weeks because of the variants.

Over the last seven days, Public Health France has recorded about 140,000 new cases, against just under 130,000 the previous seven days, with a number of hospitalized patients stable at a high level, at more than 25,000 patients. The rate of hospital deaths appears to be slowing, to 314 on Tuesday, from 352 and 439 the two previous Tuesday. In total, more than 85,000 people have died since the epidemic began a year ago.