It was the government spokesman, Gabriel Attal, who excluded this hypothesis of an imposed confinement, Sunday 8th November in an interview.
Government spokesman Gabriel Attal has ruled out confinement imposed on the elderly in order to curb the spread of the coronavirus Covid-19 epidemic while wishing that the French should not celebrate Christmas “by video”.
“There is no question for us of having an imposed confinement for the elderly,” assured Gabriel Attal, guest of the Great Europe1 / LesEchos / Cnews meeting , this Sunday 8th November 2020.
“First of all because ethically, it would be objectively complicated,” he said. “Secondly, because it sometimes means ignoring the situation of many elderly people who do not live alone and who sometimes live with several generations of the same family in the same apartment”, he added.
30% of intensive care patients are under 60 years old
The spokesperson also recalled that 30% of people currently in intensive care are under 60 years old. “We can see that, including with younger people, resuscitations could gradually become saturated,” he said.
Gabriel Attal acknowledged that the situation of the elderly during the reconfinement of this autumn is “very hard”. “They are often isolated,” he stressed.
With the approach of the holidays, he admitted that the French could not live a Christmas as usual, while they have been subject to new confinement for a week to prevent the spread of the virus.
“Celebrate Christmas as normally as possible”
“But I’ll tell you it very clearly: we don’t want a Christmas on video. We want the French to be able to celebrate Christmas as normally as possible ”, he assured.
“If we are taking difficult measures today, it is precisely to be able to live a Christmas with those close to them,” he added, without however specifying “for the moment” under which conditions the French could celebrate Christmas.
Faced with the discontent of small closed shops, who fear competition from Amazon during the “black friday” scheduled for November 27th, Gabriel Attal said that “discussions will take place this week under the aegis of the Minister of Economy, Bruno Le Maire ”.
“The French government has already obtained from Amazon to remove its pre-campaign of the black Friday which was to start these days”, he underlined. “We have a little time to prepare for this deadline” of November 27th, he added.
