This past Friday March 27th, 2020, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has decided to renew the confinement period in France "until April 15th at least". As of Monday April 13 evening, French President Emmanuel Macron announced on a televised address that these confinement measures will remain until May 11th, giving more details as for measures for resuming activities.
As for the Institut Santé, a think tank including scientists, economists, teachers, doctors and other nurses talked about the end of confinement and offered a "crisis exit plan" this past Friday April 10th. A plan the President doesn't seem to have followed.
During his address, Emmanuel Macron has also talked about the crisis exit, especially speaking about gradually reopening schools from May 11, as for secondary schools, they will not reopen until September, so will museums, show venues, theaters, movie theaters and other public spaces that will remain closed for now - among others.
For the record, as of today, France records 98,076 confirmed covid-19 contamination cases and 14,967 people have died, according to the latest reports communicated by Santé Publique France.
Implemented by the French government this past March 17th, this confinement is said to last at least fifteen days. But according to Geneviève Chêne, we would have to wait “between 2 and 4 weeks” to observe a change of the coronavirus epidemic curve. Santé Publique France health agency director general uses the opportunity to remind us of the speed of the COVID-19 propagation in the country depends on “the compliance of each one to the barrier and confinement measures”.
As for flattening the epidemic curve, Geneviève Chêne said that based on “the experiences of the other countries who experienced the epidemic before us and set up extremely strict measures, we see the dynamic spans over 2 to 3 months, an inversion of the peak comes between the first and the second month”, she add “it’s too soon today to be able to confirm anything about the epidemic dynamic in France” if we trust the example in China, the inversion of the curve could occur “mid or late May”.
