When the President Emmanuel Macon laid out the timetable to ease Covid restrictions and reclaim, in his words, "our French-style way of life" of enjoying cafés, restaurants, cinemas and museums, he set a few conditions.
“The measures will be national, but we will be able to activate ’emergency brakes’ in areas where the virus is circulating at too high a rate," Macron said, adding:
“I am confident that the whole of France will be able to move to the May 19th stage".
But authorities could delay the second phase of reopening in any town or département that recorded 7-day incidence rate of more than 400 new cases per 100,000 people, combined with a sudden jump in rates and intense pressure on local health services.
All of mainland France’s départements had on Wednesday dropped below that threshold, although the numbers included a holiday – Saturday, May 1st – when many test centres were closed.
Just two weeks ago, eight départments - the city of Paris, six of its surrounding départements and the Bouches-du-Rhone département in the south east - had incidence rates over the 400-mark.
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/QOT49/6/
The national incidence rate was 224 on Tuesday, down from 289.5 last week.
France is now recording on average 23,500 new Covid cases per day, taken as a seven-day average, down from over 30,000 mid-April and nearly 40,000 in late March.
Health Minister Olivier Véran said on Monday that declining Covid-19 case numbers raised hopes that the country could reopen café terraces and cultural establishments as planned later in May.
"The epidemic (spread) decreases by between 20 and 25 percent per week," the health minister said during an interview with students at Sciences Po University.
Le ministre de la Santé, Olivier Veran, estime qu’on aura « entre 10.000 et 15.000 cas par jour » le 19 mai, au moment de l’étape 2 du déconfinement.
— Michael Bloch (@Micbloch) May 3, 2021
On est actuellement à 23.457 en moyenne lissée sur 7 jours (-20% en une semaine). (Interview aux étudiants de Sciences Po) pic.twitter.com/hE03mtp6RB
"In 15 days, we should therefore be somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 cases per day," Véran said, pointing forward to May 19th, the date when the government plans to begin the second phase of reopening closed sectors - if the health situation permits.
IN DETAIL: France’s new calendar for reopening after Covid restrictions
On détecte 23 500 cas chaque jour, soit une évolution de -20,5% sur une semaine. pic.twitter.com/KjWOAE6OaC
— GRZ (@GuillaumeRozier) May 3, 2021
Despite the drop in case numbers, hospitals in many areas remained strained, especially in the greater Paris region Île-de-France, which had an intensive care unit occupancy rate of over 140 percent.
Bouches-du-Rhône, home to France's second largest town, Marseille, also reported an intensive care unit occupancy level over 100 percent.
National intensive care unit patient numbers - which had been stable at nearly 6,000 since mid-April, more than at the peak of nearly 5,000 patients during the second wave in autumn - began declining slightly before rising again on Monday, reaching a total of 5,630 patients. On Tuesday it dropped to 5,504.
Hospitals chiefs have repeatedly warned that sustaining such a high pressure on hospitals will have severe consequences for the patients in the need of non-Covid medical care.
"There are still too many patients in intensive care to resume a normal rhythm of care," the health minister told Europe 1 on Tuesday morning, "but in the coming weeks, the number will drop and we will be able to do so."
In some areas, hospitals have begun to see an improvement, such as in Alpes-Maritimes, the southeastern département of Nice and the French Riviera. Alpes-Maritimes, where the incidence rate had plunged down from 460 to 126 in one month, registered a drop in the pressure on hospital intensive care units down to 83 percent.
In the rest of the country, case levels remained higher in the north and east of the country than in the west, as they had done throughout the pandemic. Sparsely populated central areas and Brittany were less badly affected than other regions.
To Europe 1, Véran also said that he hoped that the face mask - currently compulsory both in all indoor public places and outside in most of French towns and cities - would soon be unnecessary outside.
"I sincerely hope that it will be this summer," he said, referring to when the government would scrap rules on masks and other health rules such as social distancing.
Five mainland départments reported an incidence rate below 100: Landes in the south west on the coast; Gers, also in the south west, near the city of Toulouse; Finistère in Brittany; Pyrénées-Atlantiques on the Spanish border; and the southern half of Corsica.
Comments