Paris | All of France will be placed under curfew at 6 p.m. from Saturday to deal with the COVID-19 epidemic, the government announced on Thursday, which also tightened border controls to prevent the arrival of variants of the virus .
• Read also: All developments in the COVID-19 pandemic
“With the exceptions related to public service missions, all places, businesses or services open to the public will be closed at 6:00 pm”, declared the head of government Jean Castex during a press conference.
Only 25 of the 101 French departments were previously subject to a 6:00 p.m. curfew. France has around 67 million inhabitants.
“It appears from the data available to date that this measure has health efficiency: in the first 15 departments where the curfew was implemented at 6:00 p.m. from January 2, the increase in the number of new cases is there 2 or even 3 times lower than in the other departments ”, argued Jean Castex.
For the moment, the situation in France “is under control compared to our neighbors but fragile because the virus is still actively circulating”, said Mr. Castex, stressing that the number of contaminations remains on “a high plateau” around 16,000. new cases daily.
In order to “prevent a spread” of the British and South African variants and in particular to prevent the British strain, which currently represents only 1 to 1.5% of contaminations, “from becoming a dominant strain” in France, Mr. Castex has announced additional measures which also concern borders.
“We will strongly tighten the conditions of entry into the territory”, he said announcing that any traveler arriving from a country outside the European Union will have to “do a PCR test before leaving and present a test negative for boarding a plane or boat ”.
And once arrived in France, these people “will have to commit to isolate themselves for seven days” and to “redo a second PCR test at the end” of this period.
The Prime Minister also announced, faced with a sharp increase in cases in Ireland and Denmark in particular, the development of a “coordination framework for the European summit on January 21”.
Mr. Castex warned that a third containment would be applied “without delay” in the event of “severe epidemic degradation”, while stressing that the current situation “does not require” such a measure.
The executive, on the other hand, “wanted to keep schools open and this is a fundamental objective for us,” added Mr. Castex.
In addition, first-year students at the university will be able to resume face-to-face tutorials in half-groups from January 25.