Tonight President Macron announced a wave of new national lockdown measures across France, following reports that more than 5,000 people across the country are now in intensive care. In a television broadcast he said that schools would move to remote learning from next week, that a 7pm curfew would now be in place and that all non-essential shops will close from Saturday.
Macron cited the so-called ‘Kent variant’ as one of the main reasons for the lockdown, telling viewers: ‘This variant which was identified for the first time from our British neighbours at the end of last year and to a certain extent, of course, gave rise to an epidemic within the epidemic and that is greater than last spring.’
It was just yesterday of course that Le Monde published a glowing article full of fawning quotes from Macron’s aides calling him ‘the president epidemiologist.’
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