France will remain locked down until at least May 11, PM Emmanuel Macron has revealed, calling on citizens to continue to respect the rules his government has imposed to slow the spread of coronavirus.
France has been locked down since mid-March and has a total of 133,685 confirmed cases of coronavirus, ranking behind only the US, Spain, and Italy in terms of casualties. Almost 15,000 people have died with the disease, though the death rate among hospitalized patients has slowed over the weekend and the number of patients being treated in intensive care has declined for several days.
The nation’s economy has taken a beating from the pandemic-induced shutdown, with the Bank of France recently reporting its worst first-quarter performance since World War II. The last two weeks of March specifically saw a 32 percent drop in economic activity, according to the central bank, which expects the economy to continue shrinking by 1.5 percent for every two weeks the nation spends under lockdown.
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