RESTRICTIONS: Around 6 million French people will no longer be able to leave their homes after 6 pm due to new curfew rules
Curfew from 6 pm for part of the country: the first weekend of the year begins under gloomy auspices for around 6 million French people. To cope with worrying epidemiological figures in the east of the country and to prevent a new outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic, the curfew is now reinforced in 15 departments. The departments concerned are Hautes-Alpes, Alpes-Maritimes, Ardennes, Doubs, Jura, Marne, Haute-Marne, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Meuse, Haute-Saône, Vosges, Territory of Belfort, Moselle, Nièvre and Saône-et-Loire.
Five other departments in which an advanced curfew was expected do not appear in this final list. These are the Aube, Haut-Rhin, Yonne, Allier and Ardèche. “Obviously in this weekend back from vacation and in these first days, there will be a very great tolerance”, however, specified Gabriel Attal, the spokesman of the government, Friday on TF1.
“The virus continues to circulate in France”
“The virus continues to circulate in France […] with a disparity between the territories”, he explained, specifying that the list of the departments concerned would be revised in a week. And “if the situation were to deteriorate further in certain territories, we will take the necessary decisions,” added the spokesperson for the executive, in response in particular to a question on the possibility of reconfigurations.
Gabriel Attal stressed that the advanced curfew would apply uniformly throughout the territory of the departments concerned, without distinction between cities and rural areas. People wishing to leave their homes for a valid reason will have to use, he explained, “the same certificate that the French currently know for the curfew at 8 pm”.
Gabriel Attal also assured that it would be “not possible” to reopen cultural establishments on the 7th January, the date scheduled for the next point on sanitary conditions.
