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HEALTH

Weekend lockdown begins in Nice, French Riviera and Dunkirk

From Saturday, the northern city of Dunkirk, along with Nice and the French Riviera, is subject to a weekend lockdown after a spike in Covid numbers.

Published: 24 February 2021 18:00 CET
Updated: 27 February 2021 10:33 CET
Weekend lockdown begins in Nice, French Riviera and Dunkirk

Health Minister Olivier Véran announced a new weekend lockdown for a Dunkirk on a trip to the northern port town on Wednesday.

“The epidemic is worsening across the country,” Véran said.

Infections have reached worrying levels in several parts of the country, spokesman Gabriel Attal told reporters earlier on Wednesday after a weekly cabinet meeting.

The warning came only days after the French Riviera was ordered into lockdown for the coming two weekends to contain Covid-19 which has been spreading faster in the tourist hotspot than elsewhere in France, and border controls were tightened.

Attal said similar moves could become necessary elsewhere because of “a worsening situation” that he said “requires rapid and strong measures”.

The northern coastal city of Dunkirk was expected to be on the list for fresh restrictions after the infection rate there went over 900 for 100,000 people, close to nine times the national average.

READ ALSO Regional lockdowns – where next and will they work?

Around 10 of France’s 101 départements were in a “very worrying situation”, Attal said.

He did not name the départements, but the ones with the highest incidence rate currently are; Alpes Maritimes, Bouches-du-Rhône, Moselle, Nord, Oise, Pas-de-Calais, Paris, Seine-et-Marne, Somme, Var, Essonne, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne.

All these départements have an infection rate higher than 250 per 100,000 inhabitants.

“We must continue all our efforts to avoid having to impose another national lockdown,” he said.

There was “obviously” no certainty that such a drastic measure could be avoided, he said, warning that the government would not hesitate to order such a move if it was deemed necessary.

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HEALTH

France reports nearly 200 cholera cases in Mayotte

Nearly 200 cases of cholera have been reported on the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, which is struggling to contain the deadly epidemic.

Published: 21 June 2024 14:08 CEST
France reports nearly 200 cholera cases in Mayotte

“As of June 18th, 2024, 193 cases of cholera have been reported in Mayotte,” France’s Santé publique France health agency reported in its weekly update.

Of those, 172 were locally acquired cases, while 21 were in people infected in the neighbouring Comoros archipelago and countries on the African continent.

Cholera is an infectious disease typically causing severe diarrhoea, vomiting and muscle cramps. It spreads easily in unsanitary conditions.

Mayotte, which is home to around 320,000 people, reported its first locally acquired cases of cholera in late April, according to officials in Paris.

Two people have died since the beginning of the epidemic, one of them a three-year-old girl.

Santé publique France warned there was a particularly high risk of transmission in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, “as long as access to drinking water and sanitation is unsatisfactory”.

French authorities have been criticised for failing to secure access to drinking water to prevent a cholera epidemic in its overseas territory.

President Emmanuel Macron called for cholera to be ‘consigned to the past’ when he hosted a summit on Thursday on vaccine production in Africa.

Many parts of Africa have recently seen fatal outbreaks of cholera, which has highlighted the shortage of local vaccine production.

The Comoros, which has been affected by a cholera epidemic for the past four months, has recorded 134 deaths and more than 8,700 cases, according to a report published by local authorities this month.

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