PARIS sunday: Shortly before the clock struck 9 pm on Saturday, restaurant shutters in Paris came down and people dashed home to beat a strict new curfew to battle the coronavirus outbreak.
Police patrolled streets which would ordinarily be bustling with party-goers to enforce the new anti-mingling measure as the country notched up a record of more than 32,000 positive Covid-19 tests in 24 hours, with 1,868 people in intensive care.
Densely-populated Paris has been an infection hotspot, with bars already shuttered since October 6 although restaurants and other establishments that serve food were allowed to stay open.
Alcohol sales are prohibited from 10 pm and face masks are compulsory in public both indoors and outside.
But there has been concern over people, especially youngsters, flouting face coverings and social distancing rules to gather in groups on restaurant terraces and in other public places.
This prompted the government to announce a 9 pm to 6 am curfew for Paris and a dozen other French cities -- some 20 million inhabitants in all -- and impose a limit of six on home gatherings blamed for a large proportion of new infections. The curfew will remain in place for at least four weeks.
At 10 pm on Saturday, the streets of the City of Light were eerily empty apart from a few stragglers risking a 135-euro ($158) fine unless they can provide a certificate to show they have good reason to be out and about.
“I'm coming back from the hospital Curie where my daughter is being operated on. They gave me this proof,” one man tells a group of police officers, presenting a piece of paper.
“That's fine, good evening sir,” one replied as he handed back the document.
Food delivery employees zigzagged the streets on bikes or scooters, bringing meals to now home-bound diners in a city where it is common to sit down to a meal after 9 pm.
A handful of municipal buses circulated without impediment down unusually car-free lanes, though mostly empty themselves. Metros and trains also continue operating to ferry people who have no choice but to break the curfew, whether for work or medical reasons.
Paris has not known a curfew since 1961, which was limited at the time to Muslims amid unrest over the Algerian war of independence from France.
(AFP)
