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PARIS — Government spokesperson Gabriel Attal said on Wednesday that the current national 6 p.m. curfew in France is insufficient to slow the current spread of COVID-19, indicating that further restrictions could be on the horizon.
The curfew has a “relative efficiency,” but “does not sufficiently slow down” the spread of the virus, Attal said.
Attal added that the government was considering “different scenarios.” They range from maintaining the current curfew, which he deemed “unlikely,” to a “very tight lockdown.” He wouldn’t expand on the latter option.
The government is expected to make a decision toward the end of the week, having given itself two weeks to assess the impact of the curfew, which was implemented on January 16.
On Wednesday, President Emmanuel Macron held a Defense Council, a confidential setting in which many of France’s lockdown measures have been decided. He also hosted the weekly government meeting, after which Attal laid out the government’s current thinking.
Leaks in the press and pressure from scientists over the last few days suggested France may be heading toward a third national lockdown, but the government insists that no decision has been made.
In the last few weeks, the government has described France’s infection rate as a “high plateau.” Numbers have slowly increased over the past week, with 22,000 new cases on Tuesday. Attal also estimated that the British variant now accounted for 10 percent of current cases in France.
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