On the theme of lockdown restrictions being eased, the Guardian’s Paris correspondent Kim Willsher has more from France:
French schools will begin to open next month at the planned end to the strict lockdown but the return to classes will be gradual, the prime minister Édouard Philippe has said.
In an address last week, Emmanuel Macron announced nurseries, primary and secondary schools would open again on 11 May.
Philippe reiterated the president’s fears that certain children were unable to work from home and for “social reasons” were falling through the cracks saying it would be a “serious danger for the nation if they were lost”, but said it was out of the question that all classes opened at once.
Philippe said:
Our aim is to find a good method and that method will be progressive. They will not open everywhere on 11 May…but we have to start opening schools for the continuity of national life.
Philippe said the government was considering various options, including having half a class in rotation, or opening schools in areas where there have been few or no Covid-19 cases before others.
Asked about teachers who had threatened to stay off work for fear of catching the virus in schools, Philippe said the coronavirus crisis had shown that many jobs dismissed as low level, from cleaners to supermarket shelf-stackers, had shown themselves to be essential. “Teachers are also essential,” he said.
The key to ending the lockdown was the rate of contamination – meaning how many people one person contaminated with the virus would pass it on to – Philippe said. The lockdown had led to fewer contacts bringing the contamination rate down to one contaminated person spreading the disease to 0.6 others. When the lockdown is lifted the authorities will be looking at keeping the rate at one person contaminating at the most one other, the PM added.
However, he warned the French not to plan too far ahead, saying weddings, parties, and travel outside of France were not immediately on the cards.
“I don’t have answers today…given the barrier rules, it doesn’t seem reasonable that a marriage of say 200 people gathered in a confined place is to be envisaged. For how long I don’t know,” Philippe said.
During the marathon two hour 15 minute press conference, he promised the government would give detailed plans of how the end of the lockdown would happen in the next two weeks.
