French Prime Minister Jean Castex has warned that the country is seeing a “clear worsening” of the coronavirus pandemic, but aimed to avoid a new nationwide lockdown that would hammer the economy.
The coronavirus causes the Covid-19 respiratory disease.
In an eagerly-awaited statement after a meeting of ministers and health experts, Castex did not announce any new restrictions but promised more efficient testing and said it was up to local authorities to decide additional measures.
Nearly 10,000 new cases have been recorded daily in the last two days, a record since wide-scale testing began, but Castex said a recent increase in Covid-19 hospitalisations was particularly worrying.
“We have to succeed in living with this virus, without returning to the idea of a generalised lockdown,” he said in a televised statement from his official residence in Paris.
“Our strategy is not changing. We must fight the virus without putting on hold our social, cultural and economic life, the education of our children and our ability to live normally,” he added.
Castex said 42 of France’s 101 departments are now classified as “red zones” where the virus is circulating rapidly, up from 28 earlier this week.
He said that the authorities in Marseille, Bordeaux and the overseas territory of Guadeloupe should by Monday present plans to deal with significant local outbreaks.
“There is no Maginot Line – inevitably it ends up reaching the most vulnerable,” he said in reference to supposedly impenetrable defences France built ahead of World War II.
But he did not announce any major new restrictions, urging people instead to respect social distancing guidelines and to wear face masks.
And the quarantine period for people who catch the virus will be shortened to just seven days from 14, to better match “the period when there is a real risk of contagion”, he said.
Castex also said that testing capacities would be ramped up in response to long wait times for appointments and results.
Priority cases involving people with confirmed exposure to Covid-19 patients or already showing symptoms will be given reserved spots at testing centres, and 2,000 more people will be recruited to carry out contact tracing.
Officials have been increasingly concerned about the high number of infections in France, even if the death toll and admissions to intensive care are well below the highs recorded in March and April.
The health ministry said 9,406 new coronavirus infections were recorded yesterday after 9,843 were registered on Thursday, the highest number since large-scale testing began.
France’s total death toll from the pandemic stands at 30,893 after 40 more people died in hospital.
The head of a scientific council advising the government on the pandemic, Jean-Francois Delfraissy, said on Wednesday that the government might soon have to make “tough” decisions to stem the outbreak.
People at high risk because of old age or health problems including diabetes, obesity and respiratory issues might require a protective “bubble” around them, for example.
Castex himself is in a seven-day period of self-isolation, having spent part of last weekend with the boss of the Tour de France Christian Prudhomme, who tested positive for Covid-19.
Castex was later deemed virus-free after an initial test.
Meanwhile, the number of coronavirus cases in Spain has leapt by more than 12,000, health ministry figures showed yesterday, the biggest jump in a 24 hour period since the pandemic began.
Spain this week became the first European Union country to surpass 500,000 Covid-19 infections, and it currently has a total of 566,326 confirmed cases according to the ministry – 12,183 more than a day before.
The new cases were not all detected in the past 24 hours however, since Spanish regions that are responsible for healthcare sometimes take several days to send figures to the central government.
During the past two weeks Spain has reported between 7,000 and 8,000 new cases of the virus per day.
On Thursday the country reported more than 10,000 new infections.
While the number of confirmed cases is sharply higher, the mortality rate is far below that recorded at the height of health crisis in late March and April, when nearly 900 deaths a day were reported.
In the last seven days the country recorded 241 virus deaths.
The disease has killed nearly 30,000 people in Spain, one of the highest tolls in the world.
Spain has also seen a surge in infections since a strict three-month national lockdown was lifted at the end of June, with Madrid facing the brunt of this so-called second wave of infections.
To curb infections, authorities have imposed fresh restrictions, ordering the closure of nightclubs and cocktail bars last month and making the use of face masks mandatory in public.
Greece’s death toll from the novel coronavirus hit 300 on Friday, the state health agency said, as the total number of infections topped 12,700.
The Eody agency said 287 new cases were confirmed yesterday, a day after an all-time record of 372 infections in 24 hours was announced.
Over half of the country’s 12,734 infections since the pandemic began were recorded in August, mostly among Greeks.
The spike has been attributed to large gatherings in violation of social distancing rules.
Greece’s civil protection agency has made masks compulsory in all indoor public areas.
The government has ruled out a general lockdown after gradually reopening the economy in May, while foreign visitors have been allowed in since June in hopes of salvaging part of the economically vital tourism season.
Nearly half of Greeks would not take a vaccine for the novel coronavirus even if it were approved and freely available, with almost 20% opposing masks as well, a poll said last week.
Meanwhile, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle has become the highest-ranking Vatican official known to have tested positive for the coronavirus.
The Vatican said yesterday that Tagle, 63, a Filipino who heads the Vatican’s missionary arm, had tested positive when he arrived in Manila on Thursday.
Tagle, who met Pope Francis in a private audience on August 29, tested negative on September 7.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said Vatican health officials are checking people who had come into contact with Tagle in recent days.
He did not say if this included the 83-year-old Pope, who is believed to be tested regularly.
He said that Tagle did not have any symptoms and would go into quarantine in Manila.
The Pope held a series of private audiences on Thursday and Friday.
On Wednesday, he held his weekly audience before a limited crowd of about 500 people.
Only about a dozen people have tested positive for the virus in the Vatican, and the few who were hospitalised with symptoms have recovered.
Meanwhile, the first European pandemic “travel bubble”, created in May by Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, has burst, as Latvia said it was mandating a 14-day quarantine on everyone arriving from Estonia.
Estonia has had 21 novel coronavirus infections per 100,000 population over the previous two weeks, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, passing the 16 threshold set by Latvia for mandatory quarantine.
Latvia, which has one of the lowest levels of infection in the European Union, has rejected the European Commission’s recommendation to raise threshold for quarantine to 25 new cases per 100,000 population over two weeks.
“This is a decision I am not ready for ... I do not think that society is ready to allow more people to enter Latvia,” Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins said yesterday, according to LETA agency.
Neighbouring Estonia, Lithuania and Finland all raised the threshold this week, keeping travel between them possible.
Sales of international bus tickets already fell by 20% last week, as people were getting worried the bubble could burst, said Rait Remmel of Lux Express, a regional bus company.
“The demand recovered over the summer, but now people obviously will not travel much, and we will need to cut our routes”, he said.
The global death toll from the coronavirus passed 900,000 on Wednesday, as worldwide cases topped 27.7mn, according to a Reuters tally.
In a bid to curb the rising spread of the virus, Lithuania reintroduced the requirement to wear facemasks inside public buildings and announced restrictions on public gatherings.
“We relaxed and began travelling, gathering together, interacting more. Since the virus was never totally exterminated, so it began spreading”, Lithuanian Minister of Health Aurelijus Veryga said.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania created the first common travel space in the European Union on May 15 in a bid to jump-start economies.
This image of a television screen shows French Prime Minister Castex as he speaks on the coronavirus situation during a press conference at the Hotel Matignon in Paris.
