COVID-19: French Health Minister puts Paris on maximum alert, says 'had no choice'

On October 4, France issued a maximum coronavirus alert for Paris and neighbouring suburbs amid the alarming resurgence of the COVID-19 infections in and across the capital.  French Health Minister Olivier Veran said in a press address that he “had no choice”. France’s PM Office announced in a statement that  Paris and three nearby counties will now be put under tightened restrictions as Paris’s trademark bars and cafes were threatened with closure and penalties were warned to forestall any violations of the government’s health safety guidelines. 

There was no alternative, and the sweeping measures would curb the soaring caseload from the second wave of the coronavirus, health minister Veran informed. He said that the maximum alert was issued for the counties Lille, Grenoble, Lyon, Saint-Etienne, and Toulouse where the coronavirus mounting figures have been a matter of worry. These towns were earlier placed under the advisory “enhanced alert zones”, while now have been switched to prohibitory “maximum alert” asking the businesses to shutter down and employees to work from home. 

“We told the mayors of Lille, Grenoble, Lyon, Saint-Etienne and Toulouse that if the measures put in place do not produce enough effects, we could be led next week to place these territories in alert zone maximum ”, Health Minister Olivier Veran reminded in a live streamed address on LCI. 

“No extra household gatherings, no extra evenings out, and complete closure of bars,” read France’s PMO restrictive orders as cited by the local French weekly Paris Capital. The alert comes as France recorded an alarming 16,972 new confirmed coronavirus cases on October 4. A French tally service ARS calculated the rate of transmission at 250 per 100,000 that triggered alert orders already in effect in the southern counties Aix-en-Provence and Marseille and French abroad territory of Guadeloupe. The coronavirus cases are shooting up disproportionately, numbers are what they’re, and they’re weighing closely, Aurelien Rousseau, ARS director for the Paris reportedly warned.

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Incidence rate exceeding 100

French home minister Gerald Darmanin acknowledged the prohibitory orders calling the maximum alert a “robust” measure to curb infection wave. Further, he advised the French citizens to adhere to the restrictions and asked the bars and pubs to close down, adding the French “like to drink, to eat” but it was the need of the hour, in an interview with broadcaster LCI and Europe 1. Paris was currently on an incidence rate exceeding 100 in the elderly, and the hospitalization with Intensive Care is put at 30 percent in, Guadeloupe and the Aix-Marseille metropolis where mostly the elderly population resided. 

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