Emmanuel Macron set to announce month-long lockdown for France

President Emmanuel Macron is expected to announce a national lockdown of at least a month from midnight on Thursday after 523 people died of Covid-19 on Tuesday, France’s highest toll since April.

Intensive care units are overstretched or close to saturation in many different parts of the country as infections continue to rise. Hospitals will need extra staff as more patients arrive in hospitals, senior doctors warned.

The lockdown is likely to be more unpopular than the first one in the spring. Retailers are anxious that it will hinder sales ahead of Christmas, but the French government is hoping restrictions can be eased in time for the festive season.

Mr Macron has not yet made a final decision, according to government sources, but French media are widely reporting that he favours a national lockdown as advocated by his scientific advisors and leading doctors. One option would be to confine people to their homes at weekends. Another might be to extend the 9pm curfew already in force for two-thirds of the population, possibly starting it earlier, from 7pm.

France’s second lockdown is expected to be less stringent than its first, with primary schools remaining open to allow parents to continue to work. Mr Macron is also said to be pondering whether non-essential shops should have to close, as they did in April, or whether they might be allowed to stay open, perhaps with restricted hours.

Stocks fell on expectations that business would slow, with leisure and travel companies worst hit.

Philippe Juvin, head of the emergency department at the Georges Pompidou hospital in Paris, said a lockdown was essential. “We must take this up,” he said, urging the government to open field hospitals for an expected influx of patients.

“We need equipment and staff. We will have to think about bringing in people who are not currently in the health system. I propose to train a vast corps of health auxiliaries in the next three weeks to help us with non-specialised tasks such as washing patients, lifting them on to stretchers, feeding them and keeping them company.”

Dr Juvin also suggested giving nursing assistants accelerated training to allow them to take on nursing roles. He appealed to all doctors with even limited experience of emergency treatment or intensive care to volunteer their services to help hard-pressed hospital doctors.

In Lyon, 90 per cent of intensive care beds are occupied. In Paris coronavirus cases now take up more than two-thirds of intensive care capacity.

Eric Caumes, head of the infectious diseases department at Paris’s largest hospital, La Pitié-Salpêtrière, said: “We have lost control of the epidemic. This did not just happen, it’s been clear for some time. A lockdown is the only way forward.”