PARIS, Oct 31 (NNN-AGENCIES) – French schools will require all students aged six and over to wear face masks in class, Prime Minister Jean Castex said ahead of a new coronavirus lockdown starting at midnight.
Until now masks were mandatory only for students 11 and older, but Castex told lawmakers in parliament that new efforts were needed “to protect all our children, teachers and parents.”
President Emmanuel Macron announced Wednesday that unlike during France’s two-month virus lockdown last spring, schools would remain open this time around, a huge relief for parents who had to balance working from home with “distance learning.”
But restaurants, bars and non-essential businesses will again be closed until at least Dec 1, and Castex said companies would be strongly pushed to have employees work from home “five days a week.”
“We have to keep working as much as possible, but of course under strict sanitary conditions that stop the virus from spreading,” he said, warning that “unemployment and poverty can also kill.”
France goes into a second nationwide lockdown this year starting midnight Thursday, amid a surge in Covid-19 cases that has threatened to overwhelm French hospitals.
In an address to the nation Wednesday night, Macron noted that, “the virus is spreading across France at a speed that even the most pessimistic did not predict.”
The new nationwide lockdown would be enforced initially until Dec 1, Macron said, although schools and creches will remain open.
He said the lockdown might start to ease once Covid-19 infections fell back to about 5,000 per day from around 40,000 per day at present.
But the government’s scientific adviser, Professor Jean-François Delfraissy, said that the lockdown may have to extend beyond Dec 1.
Speaking on France Inter radio, Delfraissy said the goal of bringing infections down to 5,000 a day was unlikely to be achieved by end of November.
“By December 1, we will not be at 5,000 contaminations per day. I can tell you that straight away today. We will need more time,” said Delfraissy, who heads the scientific council that advises the French government on the pandemic.
“The scenario is rather to have this lockdown period of one month, to look at the different types of markers and then to exit this containment through, by example, a curfew that could continue through December, possibly covering also Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and to end it only in early January”, he said.
Earlier this month, Paris and other major French cities went into an overnight curfew from 9pm to 6am in a bid to stem the spread of the virus. But on Wednesday, Macron admitted the overnight curfew failed to slow down the second wave, which has sent the death toll in France to nearly 35,000.
He admitted that a curfew for Paris and other major cities imposed two weeks ago had failed to slow down a second wave of cases that has sent the death toll in France to nearly 35,000.
“As elsewhere in Europe, we are overwhelmed by a second wave that will probably be more difficult and deadly than the first,” Macron said.
“If we did nothing… within a few months we would have at least 400,000 additional deaths,” he said.
Already more than 3,000 intensive care patients are forcing hospitals to scramble for beds, and “no matter what we do, nearly 9,000 people will be in intensive care by mid-November,” he warned.
France on Wednesday reported 244 new virus deaths over the past 24 hours, and more than 36,000 new positive tests. — NNN-AGENCIES
