France to miss goal to end coronavirus lockdown

Bloomberg

France is poised to miss a coronavirus goal set by President Emmanuel Macron as a condition for lifting the country’s lockdown next week, with daily new Covid-19 cases holding at more than twice the targeted level.
The government is worried about the pandemic indicators, and is mulling alternatives to a planned end of stay-at-home measures on December 15, Liberation reported, citing unidentified advisers in the Health Ministry. That could go as far as delaying the end of the lockdown should cases spike, according to the newspaper.
France has kept schools and construction sites open during its second lockdown in a bid to avoid more economic damage, and on November 28 allowed non-essential retailers to reopen. After plunging from a peak of more than 50,000 daily cases in early November, the seven-day average of infections has remained above 10,000 for the past week.
“We’re a little worried today; it’s true that things went down nicely and then a stagnation,” Odile Launay, an infectious-disease specialist who sits on France’s High Council for Public Health, said on BFM TV. Stores reopening and more people stepping out might explain why the numbers aren’t dropping, she said.
The target set by Macron for an average of 5,000 new daily cases by mid-December will be “very difficult” to reach, Director General for Health Jerome Salomon said at a briefing in Paris. The French president is also aiming for between 2,500 to 3,000 Covid patients in intensive care as a prerequisite to lift the lockdown that started at the end of October.