France has extended its coronavirus lockdown, while Germany has started to demand negative tests from French visitors before allowing them to cross the border amid a third wave of Covid-19 infections gripping Europe.
On Friday, France reported 41,869 new COVID-19 cases after registering 45,641 on Thursday and 35,088 a week ago, putting the hospital system under severe strain.
The number of people in intensive care units with COVID-19 rose by 57 to a 2021 high of 4,766, health ministry data showed.
Responding to the rising numbers across the border, Germany has declared all of France, including its overseas territories, as a ‘high incidence area’ for the coronavirus.
The decision on Friday by Germany’s disease control agency means people travelling from France must provide a negative test result before crossing into Germany.
Germany’s health body – The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) – also added neighbouring Denmark to its list of ‘risk areas,’ requiring 10-day quarantine after arrival in Germany.
Pictured: A graph comparing the daily new confirmed Covid-19 cases in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, as Europe is gripped by a third wave of the virus
France has extended its lockdown amid a third wave of Covid-19 infections in Europe, while Germany has started to demand negative tests from French visitors before allowing them to cross the border. Pictured: Eiffel Tower is seen empty of people as a new lockdown takes place in France, decided by the government to fight the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, on Monday 22 March 2021
Clement Beaune, France’s junior minister for European affairs, assured citizens that Germany won’t fully close the border, saying in a statement that there would also be exemptions for those who live close to it on the French side.
He added that French-German consultations are on-going ‘in the hope that these restrictions will apply for the shortest possible time.’
Meanwhile, Germany’s health officials are urging people to stay home during the upcoming Easter break to help slow the rapidly rising numbers of new infections, that have been blamed largely on the virus variant first found in the UK.
Health Minister Jens Spahn says if infections continue unchecked, Germany’s health system could be stretched to its limit in April.
The head of the RKI said Germany is just at the ‘beginning of the third wave’ of the pandemic. Covid-19 cases increased by 20,472 to 2,755,225, data from the institute showed on Saturday. The reported death toll rose by 157 to 75,780, the tally showed.
On Friday, Germany reported 21,573 new cases, compared to 17,482 a week earlier.
The number of new weekly infections per 100,000 people was 119 on Friday, compared to 70 two weeks ago, Spahn said.
He says more than 10 percent of Germans had received at least a first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in a slow rollout of vaccines in Europe.
The French government announced increased police checks on Friday to enforce travel restrictions in place in Paris and several other regions as coronavirus cases continue to soar around the country.
Checks at train stations, airports and motorway toll booths will ‘increase from today’, the prime minister’s office said, describing the situation as ‘critical’ with the arrival of a third wave of infections.
The move came after France placed three more departments in limited lockdown, with around 20 million people, including those in the Paris region, prohibited from travelling further than six miles from home except for essential reasons.
There is also a nightly curfew in place nationwide starting at 7:00 pm.
French President Emmanuel Macron has come under fire for going against the advice of scientific experts and his health minister at the end of January, when he decided not to impose a national lockdown.
‘These coming weeks will be difficult. We’ll take effective measures at the right time and to my mind there are no taboos,’ Macron said late Thursday.
‘I have no mea culpa to issue, no regrets and no sense of a failure,’ he added, defending his decision to keep a state of semi-openness at the end of January.
Pictured: A man wearing a face mask walks past a digital billboard showing a public health message reading: ‘Get Tested, Get Vaccinated, Be careful’ in Berlin on March 26, 2021
Daily cases in France have nearly doubled since the start of the month, reaching over 45,000 on Thursday, with the number of people in intensive care now nearly the same level as during the second wave in November.
In Paris, the pressure on hospitals is even greater, with the bulk of non-essential surgeries being cancelled to free up beds amid the rapid spread of the more contagious British variant, which now causes the majority of infections nationwide.
Nearly one in every 170 people is currently infected in the capital region, official data shows.
Schools across the country remain open, though individual classes in high-risk departments will now close if just one student tests positive, instead of three previously.
‘That will necessarily mean more class closures in the coming days,’ Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer said Friday, calling outright school shutdowns to slow the virus a ‘last resort.’
The number of new coronavirus cases in children under 15 has accelerated sharply over the past week, the Sante Publique France health authority said Friday.
‘The British variant… is not more contagious for children, but it is as contagious for children as for adults,’ the agency’s respiratory infections chief Daniel Levy-Bruhl said.
French President Emmanuel Macron (pictured) has come under fire for going against the advice of scientific experts and his health minister at the end of January, when he decided not to impose a national lockdown
Prime Minister Jean Castex has called France’s efforts to avoid a painful nationwide lockdown a ‘third way’ in its Covid fight, but many medical experts consider the restrictions not tough enough.
‘I understand the strategy of wanting to do gradual measures, but with the situation we are in I’m not sure that they are going to slow down the epidemic,’ Solen Kerneis, an infectious diseases specialist at the Bichat hospital in northern Paris, told AFP.
France’s vaccination campaign has also been sluggish amid a chronic shortage of doses, with only around 10 percent of the population having received at least one dose.
The top health watchdog recommended offering the jabs to dentists and vets on Friday in a modest widening of the eligibility criteria, with the focus until now on vaccinating the over-75s, medical personnel and those with existing health problems.
