PARIS – Officials say the Paris region may be heading towards a new blockade, as new variants of the virus fill intensive care units and limited vaccine supplies reduce inoculation efforts.
Special medical planes dispatched patients from the Paris area to less saturated regions over the weekend.
“If we have to block, we will,” Jerome Salomon, head of the national health agency, told BFM television on Sunday. “The situation is complex, tense and is getting worse in the Paris region.”
Salomon acknowledges that a national curfew at 6 pm “was not enough” in some regions to prevent an increase in cases, especially the variant first identified in Britain.
The French government has been relying on the curfew for months – along with the closing of restaurants and a few other businesses – to try to avoid an expensive new blockade. But localized outbreaks are raising questions about the government’s virus-fighting strategy.
Salomon says France has more people in intensive care for COVID-19 and other illnesses – about 6,300 – than the total number of ICU beds that had entered the pandemic.
France reported 90,315 virus-related deaths, one of the largest deaths in the world.
– The Associated Press