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France to impose curfew as Europe tightens curbs to fight COVID-19 resurgence
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France, Portugal and Romania became the latest European countries — after the Netherlands and Italy — to impose tougher restrictions on Wednesday as a coronavirus resurgence continues to sweep across the continent.
France will introduce a night-time curfew in major cities and re-impose a state of health emergency. Portugal returns to a “state of calamity”. Romania extends a state of alert for the fifth time. In addition, Northern Ireland of the United Kingdom sets out a range of restrictive measures.
Many European governments now have the same goal — stemming the spread of COVID-19 while avoiding a national lockdown like the one in the spring, which is economically costly.
RE-IMPOSING EMERGENCY
In a drastic move on Wednesday evening, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a night-time curfew in Paris and eight other big cities — starting from Friday midnight and lasting for a duration of at least four weeks — except for essential reasons.
“We have now entered a phase to which we must react…The virus is everywhere in France,” Macron said in a televised interview. France has been in a second wave of the coronavirus epidemic with an average of 20,000 new infection cases per day.
The situation is worrying and the curfew is a “pertinent” measure while having the whole country locked down again, like the two-month measure earlier this year, would be “disproportionate”, Macron explained.
Earlier on Wednesday, the French government adopted a decree, which will re-impose a state of health emergency in the country starting from Friday midnight, BFMTV news channel reported.
France was in a state of health emergency from March 23 to July 9 this year during the first wave of the pandemic.
Also on Wednesday, Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa announced to re-impose a “state of calamity” — one of the country’s three emergency levels — due to the “serious evolution” of the pandemic.
The decision was taken at the Council of Ministers’ meeting, which also adopted additional anti-virus measures. The new measures will enter into force on Thursday.
The new rules limit gatherings in public spaces to five people. Private family events, such as weddings and baptisms, can be attended by a maximum of 50 people, and “all celebrations, receptions and non-academic activities” are prohibited in schools in Portugal.
The Romanian government decided late Wednesday to further extend the state of alert for another 30 days starting Thursday, announced Raed Arafat, head of the Department for Emergency Situations (DSU).