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
Russian drone attack forces power cuts in Ukraine’s Kryvyi Rih, military says
- Kyiv says the campaign has forced rolling outages and emergency cuts to cities across the country, as repair crews work under fire and Ukraine relies on air defenses and electricity imports to stabilize the grid
KYIV: Russian drones struck infrastructure in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih on Wednesday, forcing emergency power blackouts for more than 45,000 customers and disrupting heat supplies, military administration head Oleksandr Vilkul said.
“Please fill up on water and charge your devices, if you have the chance. It’s going to be difficult,” Vilkul said on the Telegram messaging app.
Water utility pumping stations switched to generators and water remained in the system, but there could be pressure problems.
The full scale of the attack was not immediately known. There was no comment from Russia about the strike.
Russia has repeatedly struck Ukraine’s power plants, substations and transmission lines with missiles and drones, seeking to knock out electricity and heating and hinder industry during the nearly four-year war.
Kyiv says the campaign has forced rolling outages and emergency cuts to cities across the country, as repair crews work under fire and Ukraine relies on air defenses and electricity imports to stabilize the grid.
Kryvyi Rih, a steel-and-mining hub in the Dnipropetrovsk region and President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown, has been hit repeatedly, with strikes killing civilians and damaging homes and industry.
The city sits close enough to southern front lines to be within strike range, while its factories, logistics links and workforce make it economically important and a key rear-area center supporting Ukraine’s war effort.
