The French department of Alpes-Maritimes with the famous places Nice and Cannes will go into a nightly lockdown on Saturday. That reports the newspaper Nice-Matin. Everything indicates that Prime Minister Jean Castex will announce this in the afternoon.
According to the newspaper, the department on the Italian border with about one million inhabitants is classified in the category where the feared coronavirus is spreading most worryingly quickly. Then ‘the maximum alarm phase’ applies and corona measures are taken that dramatically limit freedom of movement and economic life.
On Saturday evening, 9 p.m., a curfew would come into force throughout the department, which would last until 6 a.m. Such measures have been in force for six days in other French cities such as Grenoble, Lille, Lyon, Montpellier, Rouen, Saint-Etienne and Toulouse.
They also affect the entire Paris region (Ile-de-France). Nice-Matin foresees that Castex will not limit itself to strict measures in cities, but will also label entire departments as very risky, including Alpes-Maritimes.
The French government also wants to extend the state of emergency, which was declared for the second time this year due to the coronavirus in mid-October, until mid-February. French media reported that a bill is being worked on in the parliament next weekend. The government is worried that the virus is currently making a strong comeback, based on established infections.
However, the death rate in the country of about 63 million residents has not been much higher in recent months than last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Between May 1 and October 5, 247,613 people died in France, only 1 percent more than last year in that period.