French Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot has been hospitalized after contracting Covid-19, her spokeswoman told CNN on Wednesday, the second government minister hospitalized with the virus this week. The 74-year-old had received her first dose of vaccine on March 17.
Labor Minister Élisabeth Borne, 59, was hospitalized on Monday with Covid-19 and discharged on Wednesday, according to a ministry statement.
“I’m relieved,” Borne wrote on Twitter when he left the hospital. She tested positive for the virus on March 1.
Covid quarantine: France is on the verge of a third wave of coronavirus, with new blocking restrictions implemented in 16 areas last Friday.
Non-essential companies were closed in the most affected areas of France, where people were forbidden to walk more than 10 km from home or travel between regions without a valid reason.
The new measures are less restrictive than those imposed in March and November last year, Prime Minister Jean Castex acknowledged when announcing them last week.
“It simply came to our notice then. The confusion over the weekend has led to more mistrust, “Jean-François Timsit, head of ICU at Bichat Hospital in Paris on France Inter radio, said on Wednesday, referring to the downgrading of travel permits because he criticized the complicated nature of the restrictions.
“We should have put the brakes on sooner,” he added in the interview.
Recalling that positive cases of Covid-19 may require hospitalization in the coming weeks, Timsit said, “Next month will be infernal.”
“We have a few difficult weeks ahead of us,” French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told BFMTV on Wednesday morning, adding: “Covid is taking a kind of expansion again, it is very worrying.”
Easter Restrictions: The minister said in an interview that there will be no reduction in restrictions for the Easter weekend, although church services will be allowed to go before nightfall. He also encouraged the French public “not to gather together in the coming weekends. “
“We have to limit them,” the minister said of the Easter holidays. “We must remain in the strict family privacy of the house, the apartment and we should not receive friends, family or travel.”