French PM announces new stricter restrictions

Paris, Jan 30 : French Prime Minister Jean Castex has announced that the country will impose a series of tighter restrictions from Sunday onwards, including border control, in an effort to contain the Covid-19 pandemic from further spreading.
“We will do everything we can to avoid a new lockdown,” the Prime Minister told the media here on Friday after a defence council on the pandemic.
Castex admitted that “the question of confinement is a legitimate one” as “the development of (the virus) variants poses a high risk of accelerating the pandemic”, Xinhua news agency reported.
“But we know the very heavy impact (of lockdown) for French people. We believe that we can still give ourselves a chance to avoid it,” he said.
In a bid to complement a nightly curfew, which “produces real effects but insufficient”, France would close borders to non-European Union countries except for essential travel starting from Sunday.
“Any entry into France and any exit from our territory to or from a country outside the European Union (EU) will be prohibited, unless there is a compelling reason, from 12 a.m. on Sunday,” the Prime Minister said.