France to exit COVID-19 lockdown in 4 steps from next week

France will gradually start easing its COVID-19 restrictions starting next week, even though concerns over a virus resurgence remain, reported Xinhua.

People can venture outside without signing a document, and a ban on intra-regional travel will be lifted on May 3, while the 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew will remain, according to a timetable President Emmanuel Macron posted on Twitter on Thursday evening.

From May 19, the night curfew will be pushed back by two hours to 9 p.m., then to 11 p.m. from June 9, before being removed later in June.

By mid-June, non-essential shops will reopen. Restaurants and cafes will be able to receive customers on terraces with a maximum of six people per table. Museums, theaters, cinemas and sport facilities will also reopen, with a limit of 800 people indoors and 1,000 outdoors.

Gyms will reopen and foreign tourists will be allowed to enter the country beginning on June 9 with a "health pass." All restrictive rules to contain the virus will be lifted by the end of June.

"The measures will be implemented nationwide, but we will be able to activate health 'emergency brakes' in areas where the virus is circulating too much," Macron told regional daily Ouest France early Thursday.

The calendar to exit from the confinement would be delayed in the regions where the incidence rate exceeds 400 cases per 100,000 inhabitants and intensive care units are close to saturation, he added.

The announcement of a gradual return to normalcy came amid positive domestic developments regarding the virus, including a slowdown in the number of new cases and a decline in hospitalizations for coronavirus infections.

On Thursday, 26,538 people tested positive for COVID-19, less than over 30,000 in the past days. The cumulative total of infections across the country stood at 5.59 million.

Daily admissions to hospitals and the number of critically ill patients -- key indicators to evaluate the domestic health system's capacity to cope with the health crisis -- fell for the third straight day.

Asked whether he expected the end of the pandemic this year, Macron said, "if there are no new, uncontrolled variants, yes."

"Maybe we will have to live with the virus for years and get vaccinated again every year," he added.

In France, some 15.2 million people have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, representing 29 percent of the adult population, and 6.25 million have completed their vaccinations, according to the health ministry.

"Now our fight is to vaccinate as quickly as possible to increase our level of collective immunity," said Macron.

The lockdown exit plan has brought hope to the catering and cultural industries, which have been suffering economic losses during the months-long curfew.

"Finally, some good news," Alain Fontaine, head of the restaurateurs' association told Le Figaro newspaper. "The nightmare of seeing the chairs on the tables will end."

French bars and restaurants have been forced to close since the end of October when the country started a second month-long nationwide lockdown, and did not reopen in December as the government had planned earlier due to a surge in new COVID-19 cases.

For Olfa Hamzaoui, a doctor at Antoine-Beclere hospital's resuscitation unit in Clamart, the gradual reopening plan was "reasonably" satisfying.

"The right choice is to de-confine gradually, in stages, with intermediate evaluations, so as to be able to continue de-confinement or not," she told LCI local television channel.

Catherine Hill, an epidemiologist, was less optimistic though. She warned that it could be an "extremely catastrophic idea" to ease restrictions as the situation was still really not that good.

"It's a political decision ... which looks very nice on paper, but in reality it is a disaster," she told France info radio.

"Instead of further slowing down (the virus spread) and getting organized to massively screen the population and isolate those who are positive before they have symptoms, we are going to allow the virus to circulate again and I fear the worst," she said.

An Elabe survey released on Wednesday showed that nearly 47 percent of French people approved of the government's de-confinement strategy, while 25 percent said it was too early to reopen amid the current situation.