On March 19th, the départements of Aisne, Nord, Oise, Pas-de-Calais, Somme, Paris, Seine-et-Marne, Yvelines, Essonne, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne, Val-d’Oise, Alpes-Maritimes, Eure, Seine-Maritime were placed on lockdown light. The extra measures come as France recorded 45,000 new cases of Covid on Wednesday – approaching the 50,000 daily cases seen before France’s second strict, nationwide lockdown was imposed in the autumn. 1 /4 — John Lichfield (@john_lichfield) March 25, 2021The situation in the greater Paris Île-de-France region, which has now been on ‘lockdown light’ for a week, is particularly worrying. “The pressure on hospitals has reached a critical level” in the Paris region, Véran said. “There are 1,400 Covid patients in intensive care, the patients are younger, sometimes without underlying illnesses.

Source: The Local March 25, 2021 17:15 UTC