France likely to extend partial lockdown

Paris, March 25 (SocialNews.XYZ) The French government is considering extending a partial lockdown, which was introduced in 16 regions last week, to three others, government spokesman Gabriel Attal said after a weekly pandemic crisis meeting chaired by President Emmanuel Macron.

Starting March 19, 16 French regions including the Paris region was placed under a four-week partial lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19, reports Xinhua news agency.

On Wednesday, Attal said the coronavirus situation was worsening across the country and three more regions, including the Rhone region where the third-largest French city of Lyon is located, may be added to the list of high-risk areas.

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Jean Castex told the Senate that tougher restrictions might be enforced according to the evolution of the pandemic.

"We will continue with this regionalised strategy. We will maintain it as much as possible. The third wave is extremely important. We could be forced to harden according to the evolution of the pandemic," he told the upper house of Parliament.

French channel BFM TV, citing data from health authorities, reported that some 26,876 people are now hospitalised in France because of ovid-19 while 248 deaths have been recorded in the last 24 hours.

In the Paris region, hospital pressure reached the highest on Wednesday as the incidence rate hit 560 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

The number of hospitalised Covid-19 patients totalled 6,643 in the Paris region, including 1,386 in intensive care, according to the latest figures from Public Health France.

As of Wednesday, 6,850,063 people in France have received at least one jab of the vaccine, or 13 percent of the adult population.

A total of 2,566,063 people, or 4.9 per cent of the adult population, have received two injections, according to the Health Ministry.

Source: IANS