France’s government is closing all schools for three weeks and instituting monthlong domestic travel restrictions to fight the spread of COVID-19.
President Emmanuel Macron announced the restrictions in an address on Wednesday, days after the number of patients in intensive care with the virus hit a new peak. The government’s count of COVID-19 patients in ICUs and hospital surveillance units was at 4,974 on Monday, higher than the previous peak of 4,919 from November.
The ICU numbers continued to surge on Tuesday, when the total number of COVID-19 patients reportedly surpassed 5,000.
“We need to hinder the spread of the virus,” Macron said on Wednesday.
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Macron also announced that 44% of ICU patients are below the age of 65.
“We can see that the numbers are charging away from us,” Macron said. Pointing to the spread of the U.K. virus strain, he said the variant has created “an epidemic within the epidemic.”
The school closures, which affect day care centers, as well as primary, middle, and high schools, will begin next week. Primary schools will return to the classroom on April 26, though middle and high school students will remain remote until May 3.
The travel restrictions that Macron announced allow French citizens to return to the country at any time but restrict residents from traveling outside a 10-kilometer, or 6-mile, radius without a written certificate.
Discouraging people from attending gatherings and parties associated with public and religious holidays, Macron insisted, “It is at such moments when we infect others at such a high rate.”
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The seven-day rolling average of new cases in France was nearly 39,000 on Tuesday, according to Our World in Data. The neighboring United Kingdom has seen its case numbers fall in recent weeks, though Germany, Poland, and some other European countries are seeing increases.
