Tag Archives: third COVID-19 lockdown

France’s Macron charts way out of third COVID-19 lockdown

By Elizabeth Pineau

PARIS (Reuters) -France will start relaxing a nightly curfew and allow cafes, bars and restaurants to offer outside service from May 19, as President Emmanuel Macron charts a way out of a third COVID-19 lockdown.

Macron, who is under pressure from business groups and a COVID-weary public to open up the economy again, announced in an interview with the regional papers a four-phase plan for unwinding France’s month-long stay-at-home order.

The easing will come despite the numbers of new daily cases and COVID-19 patients being treated in intensive care being far higher than when the two previous lockdowns were rolled back. Macron said the vaccine rollout made this possible.

“I have never gambled on the health and safety of our citizens,” Macron said. “I take responsibility for the choices I make, but these are never bets.”

The plan envisages the nightly curfew being pushed back to 2100 from 1900 CET from May 19 and to 2300 from June 9, before being scrapped completely on June 30.

Museums, cinemas and theatres will also be allowed to reopen on May 19. Foreign tourists with a “health pass” will be allowed to visit France again from June 9, according to the timetable published by Ouest France and other newspapers.

The timetable is provisional and could be delayed on a region-by-region basis in areas where intensive care units are close to saturation or the COVID-19 incidence rate exceeds 400 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

‘EMERGENCY BRAKE’

“We will be able to pull an emergency brake in territories where the virus is too present,” Macron said.

The incidence rate in Paris and its surrounds was an average 459 per 100,000 people in the seven days up to April 25 and is falling, data showed. Ile de France is home to nearly a fifth of France’s population and accounts for 30% of economic activity.

About 22% of all French citizens have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to a Reuters tracker.

Accelerating the rollout in France, Europe and in developing countries is paramount to push back against the virus, Macron said.

Opening up the vaccine to more people in France, Macron said COVID shots would be made available to all obese adults from May 1.

Macron said France could use a digital or paper-based ‘health pass’ to help curb the spread of the virus at events with large crowds such as sport stadia or festivals. But he said it would not be right to use them at everyday venues like restaurants or cinemas.

“A health pass will never be a right of access that differentiates the French,” the president said. “As it pertains to public liberties, parliament will debate the matter.”

France’s main COVID-19 indicators all showed some signs of improvement on Wednesday, with the seven-day moving average of daily new infections falling to 27,366 compared with 38,000 when the lockdown began.

France has recorded 5.57 million COVID-19 cases and 103,947 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

(Reporting by Elizabeth Pineau; writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Gareth Jones and Sonya Hepinstall)

Ontario ‘pulling the emergency brake’ with third COVID-19 lockdown as cases rise, ICU beds fill

By Allison Martell and Moira Warburton

TORONTO (Reuters) – The Canadian province of Ontario will enter a limited lockdown for 28 days on Saturday, as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations rise and more dangerous virus variants take hold, the premier said on Thursday.

The lockdown for Canada’s most populous province will fall short of enacting a stay-at-home order, which new government modeling released earlier on Thursday suggested would be necessary to avoid a doubling to some 6,000 new COVID-19 cases per day by late April.

Ontario’s third lockdown since the pandemic began will shutter all indoor and outdoor dining, although retailers will remain open with capacity limits, Premier Doug Ford said, calling the measures “pulling the emergency brake” on the entire province.

“We’re now fighting a new enemy,” Ford said. “The new variants are far more dangerous than before. They spread faster and they do more harm than the virus we were fighting last year… That means we need to take action now.”

Schools would remain open, Ontario’s education minister said on Twitter.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses (CFIB) panned the lockdown measures, calling it “unconscionable” for the government to “continue to rely almost exclusively on blanket lockdowns” for controlling cases. It said the new measures were making small businesses “a scapegoat for the Ontario government’s lack of planning or foresight.”

Earlier on Thursday, new modeling released by an expert panel advising the provincial government predicted that new cases of COVID-19 would double unless the government imposes a stay at home order.

The report suggested a two- or four-week stay at home order imposed on April 5 could reverse the rise in new infections.

The new model came as more than 150 critical care doctors published a letter urging Ontario to act to halt a wave of infections there.

“We are seeing younger patients on ventilators – many are parents of school-aged children,” the letter said. “We are seeing entire families end up in our ICUs. We are caring for people who have contracted COVID-19 at work, or who have followed all the rules and only gone out for groceries.”

As new, more contagious and deadly coronavirus variants spread across the province, the number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units has reached 464, higher than at the peak of the last wave, said Ontario Chief Medical Officer David Williams at a media briefing.

Data confirms that current seriously ill patients are younger with 46% of ICU admissions between March 15 and March 21 under age 60, up from 30% during a December surge, according to the expert panel.

And vaccination rates are lower in neighborhoods hit hardest by COVID-19. In areas with the highest incidence of infection, about 8% of residents have received the vaccine, compared with 13% in areas with the lowest incidence.

Howard Njoo, Canada’s deputy chief medical officer, said he was particularly concerned about the potential for COVID-19 to spread as people gather for Easter this weekend.

“We have seen in the past a spike in cases following a long weekend,” he told a briefing in Ottawa on Thursday. “We’re very worried and really I would implore all Canadians … to stay home.”

(Reporting by Allison Martell in Toronto and Moira Warburton in Vancouver; additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Franklin Paul and Bill Berkrot)