PARIS: France’s health minister Olivier Veran said on Tuesday the country was regaining control over the coronavirus but was not ready to ease the second national lockdown imposed to rein in the disease.
After curfew measures applied in major French cities in mid-October failed to produce the results the government had hoped for, it enforced a one-month lockdown on Oct. 30, though it was less strict than the one that ran from March 17 to May 11.
“If we let up our efforts too early, if we are less compliant with the lockdown, we might be subject to a new epidemic surge that would undo all the hard work done by the French people for several weeks,” Veran told BFM TV.
After hitting a peak of 86,852 new infections per day on Nov. 7, the rate has dropped sharply with the total reaching a more than one-month low on Monday, at 9,406.
However, the number of people hospitalized for COVID-19 has reached an all-time high of 33,497, even though the seven-day moving average of additional hospitalizations, presently at 339, has steadily gone down since the beginning of the month, when it peaked at more than 1,000.
These positive trends, acknowledged by Veran on Monday, have led to calls to start loosening the lockdown as soon as possible.
Shop owners want to be allowed to reopen for the Nov. 27-29 “Black Friday” discount weekend. They have been struggling to compete against giant online retailer Amazon, which is continuing operations throughout lockdown.
But Veran dismissed the idea.
“Things are faring better but it is of utmost importance not to change course. I want us to be efficient in the long run,” he said.
With almost two million cases, France has the world’s fourth-highest number of infections, behind the United States, India and Brazil. Its death toll, at 45,054, is the seventh-highest globally. (Reporting by Benoit Van Overstraeten and Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Ed Osmond)
France regaining control over coronavirus, says health minister
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France regaining control over coronavirus, says health minister
- Veran said the virus was circulating a little less rapidly than at the start of the curfews
- France enforced a one-month lockdown on Oct. 30
Bomb attacks on Thailand petrol stations injure 4: army
- Authorities did not announce any arrests or say who may be behind the attacks
BANGKOK: Assailants detonated bombs at nearly a dozen petrol stations in Thailand’s south early Sunday, injuring four people, the army said, the latest attacks in the insurgency-hit region.
A low-level conflict since 2004 has killed thousands of people as rebels in the Muslim-majority region bordering Malaysia battle for greater autonomy.
Several bombs exploded within a 40-minute period after midnight on Sunday, igniting 11 petrol stations across Thailand’s southernmost provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, an army statement said.
Authorities did not announce any arrests or say who may be behind the attacks.
“It happened almost at the same time. A group of an unknown number of men came and detonated bombs which damaged fuel pumps,” Narathiwat Governor Boonchauy Homyamyen told local media, adding that one police officer was injured in the province.
A firefighter and two petrol station employees were injured in Pattani province, the army said.
All four were admitted to hospitals, none with serious injuries, a Thai army spokesman told AFP.
Thailand’s Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters that security agencies believed the attacks were a “signal” timed with elections for local administrators taking place on Sunday, and “not aimed at insurgency.”
The army’s commander in the south, Narathip Phoynok, told reporters he ordered security measures raised to the “maximum level in all areas” including at road checkpoints and borders.
The nation’s deep south is culturally distinct from the rest of Buddhist-majority Thailand, which took control of the region more than a century ago.
The area is heavily policed by Thai security forces — the usual targets of insurgent attacks.
