Paris Bans Night Food Delivery And Takeaway Services Amid COVID-19
The police prefecture in Paris has announced it will ban delivery and takeaway services for prepared food and alcohol between 10 pm and 6 am in a bid to curb the worsening COVID-19 pandemic. In a statement, police officials said the sale and consumption of alcoholic drinks in public spaces during those hours would also be banned. President Emmanuel Macron imposed a new lockdown last month, forcing non-essential shops – such as those not selling basic foods or medicines – to close, and making people use signed documents to justify being out on the streets.
President Emmanuel Macron imposed a new lockdown last month, forcing non-essential shops – such as those not selling basic foods or medicines – to close, and making people use signed documents to justify being out on the streets. Restaurants, closed under lockdown rules, are allowed to serve takeaway and to deliver, but the prefecture said that at nighttime lots of customers and food couriers are congregating, despite the need to limit social interaction. “When you get people who are not playing by the rules of the game, and are therefore putting at risk the health of a large number of people, that is when you need to put in place new restrictions,” Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said as she warned of restrictions on selling takeaway food and drink.
But a week into the lockdown, France still registers more than 40,000 new virus infections per day and intensive care units across the country are under stress as more than 4,200 ICU beds are now occupied by COVID-19 patients. The second wave of coronavirus infections tearing across France will be more severe than the first experienced in the spring if it is allowed to continue spreading at the current rate, the country’s health minister said at a press conference.
A French government source said this week that they had noted in Paris “clandestine parties, raves, private dinners” and felt stricter measures were needed. New COVID-19 lockdowns and curbs have stirred resistance across Europe even as countries including France and Spain deal with record daily infections and hospitals under pressure.
The Paris region health authority said in a statement that 92% of the region’s ICU capacity is now occupied, with nearly 1,050 COVID-19 patients and 600 patients with other problems. The 58,046 record was almost 6,000 higher than the previous one, set on Monday and a further 363 deaths were registered on Thursday, taking the country’s total death toll from the coronavirus to 39,037 while the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases stands at more than 1.6 million, the fifth-highest tally in the world.
Gilles Pialoux, head of infectious diseases at the Paris Tenon hospital said that the only way to reduce the current infection rate in France was to limit the circulation of people. “We will probably have to forget about the Christmas holidays in order to save 2021. This year, Christmas will be over Skype,” he said.