France announces to extend 6pm to 6 am Curfew

France will continue a 6 pm -to-6am curfew to the whole of the country, Prime Minister Jean Castex has published. The curfew will appear into force on Saturday and last for “at least” 15 days, he continued.

A nighttime curfew going on from 8pm to 6am was first introduced on December 15, following a national lockdown.

Almost two dozen of France’s 95 départements – mainly in the east – have since been given more stringent curfews starting at 6pm.
This 12-hour curfew will be extended to the entire country.

Castex said on Thursday that “while the resumption of the epidemic was concentrated at the end of December in some departments, viral circulation now affects the entire country.”

He added that the normal percentage rate across the country is now above 50 incidents per 100,000 inhabitants.

Any public place getting people will thus need to be closed at 6pm at the latest, Castex said, and people outside their home past that time will need to justify their movement.

The measure is “graduated and proportionate”, Castex argued, as the current epidemiological status “does not justify a new lockdown”.

However, he stressed that a third national lockdown could be imposed if a “strong epidemic degradation” is observed.
“Our situation is worrying even if it has generally stabilised,” Castex continued, describing it also as “under control compared to what we see in our neighbours,” but “fragile because the virus is still circulating actively on our territory”.

The country currently displays an average of 16,000 new infections every day. The pressure on hospitals “survives stable but is at a high level”, Castex emphasized.

There were 24,769 people hospitalized for COVID-19 across France on Wednesday, including 2,711 in intense care.