With the beautiful days and the beginning of the Easter holidays, the observation is there: passers-by are back on the streets, despite the confinement measures.
With the start of the holidays in France and the sun shining all over the country, the authorities fear a loosening of confinement, while the death toll from the coronavirus has jumped to more than 7,500 and patient transfers continue.
New Ile-de-France patients suffering from Covid-19 will be transferred on Sunday at midday on two medical trains to Brittany. The region has already received six patients from Haut-Rhin and 36 from Ile-de-France.
In total, according to the DGS, more than 550 patients in critical condition have been evacuated since March 18, from Grande Est and IDF to less saturated regions.
Read also: Coronavirus: an improvement within three weeks in the Grand Est?
“Too many walkers”
“No relaxation, stay at home,” also urged AP-HP director-general, Martin Hirsch, deploring the presence of “too many people in the streets, too many strollers, too many walkers” in Paris, crossed by caregivers on their way to work.
In the capital for a few days, the relaxation has been noticeable in places.
Confinement: un relâchement des Parisiens ce week-end? pic.twitter.com/kzWsGjNL6Y
— BFM Paris (@BFMParis) April 5, 2020
In the courtyards of closed buildings, where families have until now been careful not to mix too much, children are now playing in groups, noted an AFP journalist in the 19th arrondissement. In good weather, a father installed a badminton net on a pedestrian street on Saturday. Vertically rebuked by passers-by, he ended up going home.
In Marseilles too, many passersby reappeared in the streets.
Yet controls
Since Friday, the start of school holidays in zone C, which brings together the academies of Ile-de-France and Occitania, more than 160,000 police and gendarmes have been mobilized to kill in the bud any hint of going on vacation.
But on this point, the French seem to have understood the message. “Departures on vacation, which were a little feared, are generally postponed to a later date,” noted captain Sylvain Guilhon, who participated on Saturday in a surveillance system of the gendarmerie around Bordeaux, by helicopter.
Additional measure by the authorities: tourist accommodation does not have the right to accommodate the public in all the municipalities of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine coast, from Charente-Maritime to Pyrénées-Atlantiques. Similar measures have been taken in Brittany.
7,560 deaths in France
Confined since March 17 to fight against the spread of the epidemic, France has registered an additional 441 deaths in the last 24 hours in the hospital. Taking into account the 2,028 deaths in nursing homes and other medico-social establishments, this brings the total of deaths to 7,560 . On Saturday, more than 6,800 people were in intensive care.
The virus has reached the archipelago of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. Wallis-et-Futuna remains the only place in French territory saved.
As the peak of the epidemic “approaches”, according to the Director-General of Health Jérôme Salomon, the French are asked not to relax the effort of confinement and to spend at home the Easter holidays, which have started this weekend.
