French Riviera Cities Under Lockdown As New Infections Soar

PARIS (AP) — Residents of Nice in the French Riviera will be denied their strolls along the beach on a sunny weekend, under a temporary local lockdown imposed to curb soaring COVID-19 infections.

Starting on Friday evening, Nice and the surrounding coastal area will be under weekend lockdowns for at least two weeks, in addition to a national 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew. The northern port of Dunkirk is under similar restrictions.

In both places, numbers of infections have spiked and hospitals are overwhelmed, with some patients being transferred to other French regions.

Nice mayor Christian Estrosi announced on Friday a ban on the beaches and the famous Promenade des Anglais esplanade, where lots of people usually go for a seaside stroll, to ensure the restrictions are fully respected.

“We absolutely need to avoid too big gatherings, as the weekend is expected to be summer-like and extremely attractive ... Reason must prevail,” he said in a video message posted on social media. Only essential shops will remain open, he added.

Nice reported this week a rate of almost 800 COVID-19 infections per 100,000 people, nearly four times the national average.

Estrosi has repeatedly attributed the worsening situation in his city to the presence of “too many tourists” during end-of-year holidays, listing the UK, Scandinavia, United Arab Emirates and Russia, which have direct flights to Nice airport.

“We are now paying a very high price,” he said. Since then, France has banned almost all travelers from outside the European Union and applied restrictions to those coming from inside the bloc.

The weekend lockdown also includes nearby coastal towns of Cannes, Antibes and nearby Mediterranean beauty spots.

Residents will be able to go out only for essential needs such as food shopping, medical appointments or urgent family business. Taking exercise outside will be allowed for a maximum of one hour per day and up to 5 kilometers (3 miles) from home.

The national 6 p.m. curfew will apply during the week.
By SYLVIE CORBET

Paris Bars Face Possible Closure As Virus Patients Fill ICUs

 

Naguey drinks a final beer with his cat Nela before bars and restaurants close, in Marseille, southern France, Sunday Sept. 27, 2020. As restaurants and bars in Marseille prepared Sunday to shut down for a week as part of scattered new French virus restrictions, Health Minister Olivier Veran insisted that the country plans no fresh lockdowns. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

PARIS (AP) — With COVID-19 patients now filling about one-third of the intensive care units in the Paris area, France’s health minister threatened Thursday to close bars and ban family gatherings, if the situation doesn’t improve.

Intensive care units in other regions of France are also filling up with virus patients, as more than two months of increasing infections have now spread to the country’s elderly and vulnerable populations.

But while other countries have imposed new localized lockdowns to fight rebounding cases, France’s government is taking pains to avoid that and adopting relatively modest localized measures instead.

French Health Minister Olivier Veran warned that the government could classify Paris and nearby suburbs as a “maximum alert zone” starting Monday, leading to measures such as shutting bars and banning “family parties” or other big gatherings.

He didn’t set a limit on group sizes or indicate what the alert zone designation might mean for the French Open, currently under way on Paris’ western edge and open to up to 1,000 spectators per day.

Amid now-daily protests against virus restrictions on French cafes, Veran said restaurants might be able to stay open -- if they impose tighter rules.

The maximum alert level means that “the risk of hospital saturation is very high,” Veran said, as authorities unveiled region-by-region data showing that the number of patients in intensive care in some areas is rising faster than the government predicted a month ago.

The Paris region looks especially worrying, with 30-35% of ICU beds now occupied by virus patients, and hospitals delaying some scheduled surgeries to make space for COVID cases, the health minister said. Paris is now registering nearly 200 positive cases per 100,000 people per week, and more than 100 positive cases per 100,000 elderly people.

The situation in the capital is starting to resemble that of the Mediterranean city of Marseille and the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, where all restaurants and bars were shut down after the government put them at the maximum alert level last week.

Veran said there are signs that the infection growth is slowing in Marseille, Bordeaux and Nice. But he said it is too early to lift restrictions, and that France overall is still “in the phase of an aggravation of the situation.”

France has been recording more than 10,000 new confirmed cases a day for the past two weeks, and has reported a total of 31,956 virus-related deaths, among the highest tolls in Europe.