French vaccine rollout slowed by focus on elderly, red tape

January 09, 2021

PARIS (AP) — The few hours it took to give the first coronavirus vaccine shots to 14 residents of the John XXIII nursing home — named after a pope and not far from the birthplace in eastern France of vaccine pioneer Louis Pasteur — took weeks of preparation.

The home's director, Samuel Robbe, first had to chew his way through a dense 61-page vaccination protocol, one of several hefty guides from the French government that exhaustively detail how to proceed, down to the number of times (10) that each flask of vaccine should be turned upside down to mix its contents.

“Delicately,” the booklet stipulates. “Do not shake." As France tries to figure out why its vaccination campaign launched so slowly, the answer lies partly in forests of red tape and the decision to prioritize vulnerable older people in nursing homes. They are perhaps the toughest group to start with, because of the need for informed consent and difficulties explaining the complex science of fast-tracked vaccines.

Claude Fouet, still full of vim and good humor at age 89 but with memory problems, was among the first in his Paris care home to agree to a vaccination. But in conversation, it quickly becomes apparent that his understanding of the pandemic is spotty. Eve Guillaume, the home's director, had to remind Fouet that in April he survived his own brush with the virus that has killed more than 66,000 people in France.

“I was in hospital,” Fouet slowly recalled, “with a dead person next to me.” Guillaume says that getting consent from her 64 residents — or their guardians and families when they are not fit enough to agree themselves — is proving to be the most labor-intensive part of her preparations to start inoculations later this month. Some families have said no, and some want to wait a few months to see how vaccinations unfold before deciding.

“You can’t count on medicalized care homes to go quickly,” she says. “It means, each time, starting a conversation with families, talking with guardians, taking collegial steps to reach the right decision. And that takes time.”

At the John XXIII home, between the fortified town of Besancon and Pasteur's birthplace in Dole, Robbe has had a similar experience. After the European Union green-lighted use of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine in December, Robbe says it took two weeks to put together all the pieces to this week vaccinate 14 residents, just a fraction of his total of more than 100.

Getting consent was the biggest hurdle for a doctor and a psychologist who went from room to room to discuss vaccinations, he says. The families of residents were given a week over the December holidays to approve or refuse, a decision that had to be unanimous from immediate family members.

When one woman's daughter said yes but her son said no, a shot wasn't given because “they can turn against us and say, ‘I never agreed to that,’” Robbe explained. “No consensus, we don't vaccinate.” Only by cutting corners and perfunctorily getting residents to agree could the process go quicker, he says.

“My friends are saying, ‘What is this circus? The Germans have already vaccinated 80,000 people and we’ve vaccinated no one,'" he says. "But we don’t share the same histories. When you propose a vaccine to Germans, they all want to get inoculated. In France, there is a lot of reticence about the history of vaccinations. People are more skeptical. They need to understand. They need explications and to be reassured.”

France prioritized nursing homes because they have seen nearly one-third of its deaths. But its first vaccination on Dec. 27, of a 78-year-old woman in a long-term care facility, quickly proved to have been only the symbolic launch of a rollout that the government never intended to get properly underway before this week.

Only on Monday, as scheduled, did authorities launch an online platform where health workers must log all vaccinations and show that those inoculated got an obligatory consultation with a doctor, adding to the red tape.

In some countries that are moving faster than France, the bureaucracy is leaner. In Britain, where nearly 1.5 million have been inoculated and plans are to offer jabs to all nursing home residents by the end of January, those capable of consenting need only sign a one-page form that gives basic information about the benefits and possible side effects.

No doctor interviews are needed in Spain. It started vaccinating the same day as France but administered 82,000 doses in the first nine days, whereas France managed just a couple of thousand. Germany, like France, also mandates a meeting with a doctor and is prioritizing shots for care home residents, but it is getting to them quicker, using mobile teams. At its current rate of nearly 30,000 vaccinations per day, Germany would need at least six years to inoculate its 69 million adults. But while the German government is facing criticism for the perceived slow rollout, France made an even more leisurely start, at least in numerical terms, but has pledged to reach 1 million people by the end of January.

Other countries have racked up bigger numbers by offering shots to broader cross-sections of people who are easier to reach and can get themselves to appointments. The large majority of the more than 400,000 doses administered in Italy have gone to health-care workers.

Lucile Grillon, who manages three nursing homes in eastern France, says the many hours invested to prepare vaccinations for 50 residents and staff who got jabs on Friday was time well spent. She worked through the holidays to get ready.

“We can’t wait until we have the doses in our fridge to realize that we’re not ready to vaccinate and then have to throw doses away and say, ‘Rats! I didn’t think of that,’” she adds. “The doses are too precious.”

“It takes us two months to prepare for flu shots. Here, we have been asked to set records, to vaccinate against COVID in under 15 days," she says. “I don’t see how we could have gone any quicker.”

Associated Press writers Pan Pylas in London, Nicole Winfield in Rome, Ciaran Giles in Madrid and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed.

France's go-slow coronavirus vaccination strategy backfires

January 04, 2021

PARIS (AP) — France’s cautious approach to rolling out a coronavirus vaccination program appears to have backfired, leaving barely 500 people inoculated in the first week and rekindling anger over the government’s handling of the pandemic.

Amid public outcry, the health minister vowed Monday to step up the pace, and made a belated public plea on behalf of the vaccine, saying it offers a “chance” for France and the world to vanquish a pandemic that has killed more than 1.8 million people. President Emmanuel Macron was holding a special meeting with top government officials Monday to address the vaccine strategy and other virus developments.

The slow rollout of the vaccine made by Pfizer and the German firm BioNTech was blamed on mismanagement, staffing shortages during holiday vacations and a complex French consent policy designed to accommodate unusually broad vaccine skepticism among the French public.

Doctors, mayors and opposition politicians pleaded Monday for speedier access to vaccines. “It’s a state scandal,” said Jean Rottner, president of the Grand-Est region of eastern France, where infections are surging and some hospitals are over capacity.

“Getting vaccinated is becoming more complicated than buying a car,” he said on France-2 television. In France, a country of 67 million people, only 516 people were vaccinated in the first six days, according to the French Health Ministry. Health Minister Olivier Veran promised that by the end of Monday, “several thousand” people will have been vaccinated, with the tempo picking up through the week — but that still leaves France well behind its neighbors.

Germany’s first-week total surpassed 200,000 and Italy’s was over 100,000 — and even those countries are under fire for being too slow to protect the public from a pandemic that has killed more than 1.8 million people worldwide.

The U.S. and China, meanwhile, have vaccinated millions. Britain on Monday became the first nation in the world to start giving people shots of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, so the U.K. now has two approved vaccines to use.

France started its vaccination campaign on Dec. 27 in nursing homes, because so many elderly people have died with the virus. But facing fears that people with cognitive problems would be vaccinated against their will, the government devised a time-consuming screening process before the vaccines can be ordered and administered.

Macron's government is also keen not to appear that it is forcing vaccines on anyone. Though France has lost more lives to the virus than most countries — over 65,000 — polls suggest the French are unusually wary of vaccines. They remember past French drug scandals, worry about how quickly these new vaccines were developed and their long-term impact, and wonder about the profits they bring to big pharmaceutical companies.

But many other French people are eager to vaccinated and have been frustrated by the surprisingly slow rollout. “We are doing anything we can to motivate people to get vaccinated,” said Frederic Leyret, director of the St. Vincent Hospital in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, whose geriatric rehabilitation facility started vaccinations Monday.

He lamented a mixed message from leading French officials, which he sums up as: “Go get vaccinated, but we will go slowly because it could be dangerous.” Now that millions of people in multiple countries are getting injected, he said attitudes are starting to shift. The French government adjusted its policies over the weekend to allow immediate vaccinations for medical workers over 50, alongside nursing home residents. Vaccines will gradually be made available to others.

On Monday, French authorities reported 378 new deaths from the virus and said numbers of COVID-19 patients hospitalized in intensive care units — more than 2,600 people — remained stable. Similar troubles have surfaced around Europe.

Spain saw vaccinations move slowly over the New Year holiday, blamed on shortages of medical personnel and of freezers for the vaccine, after a batch of them were caught in a bottleneck of trucks trying to enter the European mainland from Britain.

Spain has received in total 718,535 vaccine doses from Pfizer and BioNTech, but had only administered 82,334 by Monday, Health Minister Salvador Illa said. He added authorities that are confident that vaccination levels will reach “cruising speed” by next week, once the holiday period is over.

In Germany, where nearly 265,000 coronavirus vaccinations had been reported by Monday, impatience is growing with what is seen as a slow start. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert promised that “some things can and will improve.”

Amid the criticism, a European Commission spokesman defended the European Union’s collective vaccine strategy, saying Monday that the main problem is a shortage of production capacity. The European Medicines Agency, the medical regulator for the 27-nation bloc, was meeting Monday to discuss approval of Moderna's coronavirus vaccine.

Samuel Petrequin in Brussels, Aritz Parra in Madrid, and Geir Moulson in Berlin, contributed to this report.

'New start:' Medics juggle surgery backlogs and virus fight

December 08, 2020

PARIS (AP) — Chatting before they go under the knife, the two women picture their lives after surgery. Caroline Erganian hopes to be rid of her pain. Lolita Andela imagines being able to be active with her kids.

After multiple false dawns, they scarcely dare believe that their Paris hospital, no longer monopolized by COVID-19 patients, is once again able to perform their stomach surgeries to treat obesity. When the pandemic was burning through France's health system, the women's operations were repeatedly pushed back. But after months of waiting, their turn has now come.

Lying on a gurney, ready to be wheeled into the operating room, Erganian, a retired secretary, tells the surgeon: “I’m doing this surgery to have a better life. So I'm enthusiastic, not a bit scared."

“A new start,” replies the surgeon, Lara Ribeiro Parenti, thrilled to be back at work with her scalpel. “This is what we know best and what we enjoy doing. It’s a renewal, a new start, for us, too.” For these women, yes. But many thousands of others in France and other European countries hardest-hit by the pandemic are still waiting for medical procedures that could change their lives and improve their health, but which were deemed nonessential when the virus ripped through hospitals.

To prevent the collapse of public health systems, their decks were cleared. People who had been scheduled for joint replacements to free them from pain, for cataract removals to defog their sight, for cancer checks, and myriad other life-improving and even potentially life-saving procedures, were told to stay home as staving off COVID-19 took priority.

At the Bichat Hospital in Paris, one of the French capital’s largest with 900 beds, wards fell silent as resources were poured into critical care units in the basement. But doctors are now better able to treat virus patients and better equipped for the double challenge of fighting COVID-19 while also doing other medicine. With France’s most recent virus spike now stabilized, Bichat is using the lull to tackle the backlog of surgeries. An Associated Press team spent two days this month with its staff, seeing how they are recovering from virus surges that left more than 55,600 dead in France.

Bichat was the first hospital outside Asia to report a COVID-19 death, back in February, and was turned upside down when the pandemic struck with full force in March. Makeshift plastic screens were erected to stop contamination spreading, held up with duct tape and bits of wood. Operating rooms and a recovery room the size of a tennis court were among spaces hastily converted for floods of sick people, who were plugged into ventilators, one next to the other.

“It was cataclysmic," recalls Simon Msika, the head of digestive surgery whose unit was among those that emptied. “The basement was teeming with people.” When President Emmanuel Macron declared that France was at war with the virus and put the country into lockdown in March, Erganian and Andela both immediately understood that their surgeries wouldn't happen as planned.

“It was a hammer blow for the family, because we were ready," says Andela, who is the carer for a man with disabilities. Admissions for COVID-19 aside, hospitalizations across France plunged, with 2 million fewer hospital stays from March to July compared to the same period of 2019, the French Hospitals Federation says. Cataract surgeries stopped almost entirely for eight weeks, and colonoscopies used to spot cancers plummeted by 87%. There were half as many kidney transplants from March to September, according to the federation. Its statisticians estimate that the number of patients waiting for postponed procedures has swelled by hundreds of thousands.

Neighboring Spain was battling long waiting lists for non-urgent surgeries even before the virus caused more than 45,600 deaths there. Public health data shows that in the first half of 2020, surgeries plunged by more than a third year-on-year. The average waiting time has grown from 115 days to 170. At the end of June, 691,508 people were registered as waiting for non-urgent procedures — 20,000 more than a year earlier.

In Portugal, almost 100,000 surgeries had been postponed by October. And the association of hospital surgeons in Italy says more than 600,000 operations have been canceled there, 50,000 of them for cancer. By June, the association was already warning that more than 13 months would be needed to clear the backlog.

Delays are more than mere inconveniences for patients. Erganian weighed 140 kilograms (308 pounds) before surgery; Andela was 133 kilos (293 pounds). Both were terrified of becoming infected by the virus, acutely aware that obesity puts them at greater risk of dying from COVID-19. Other than for work and groceries, Andela says she barely left the house. Erganian says she lived in “monstrous fear.”

Both gained additional kilos in lockdown. Andela wept when her nutritionist weighed her. “I have three kids. I dream of doing lots of things with them that I cannot do now: rollerblading, scootering, hoverboarding, going to the swimming pool without having to hide,” the 33-year-old said the afternoon before her gastric bypass surgery.

Erganian, 58, hopes to shed more than a third of her weight as a result of having a large part of her stomach cut out and be free of knee and back pain — and of her cane. She prayed in the final weeks that her phone wouldn’t ring with news of another delay.

“In a European country as developed as France, I find it abnormal that surgeries that should have been done couldn’t be carried out because of COVID,” she says. “We should not be choosing between one sick person and another.”

The pandemic hit with such force initially that hospitals in many countries barely coped, but that is changing. During France's second lockdown from Oct. 30, surgeons at Bichat performed many more operations than during the first shutdown. All 22 of the hospital's operating rooms were functioning again this month.

The operating room schedule that Aurelie Gouel manages was largely filled with gaping holes in March but is now a tightly packed puzzle of colored blocks, each representing a surgery. She likens the task of fitting in as many operations as possible to the computer game Tetris.

Gouel calculates that the pandemic has so far forced the postponement of more than 600 surgeries at Bichat. Even with operating rooms again going full tilt, she can't see how the hospital will catch up.

“There will always be other patients who take priority," she says. "It is going to be complicated for a long time.”

Associated Press writers Aritz Parra in Madrid, Barry Hatton in Lisbon and Frances d'Emilio in Rome contributed.

France to offer free birth control to all women up to 25

September 09, 2021

PARIS (AP) — France will offer free birth control to all women up to age 25 starting next year, the health minister announced Thursday. The measure will also include free medical visits about contraception, and will start Jan. 1, Health Minister Olivier Veran announced on France-2 television.

All contraceptive methods were already free for girls up to 18 years old, and that is being expanded to all women up to 25. Abortions in France are free for all women and girls. Veran said young women are using contraception less than they used to, and that the main reason is financial. He didn't cite specific data. France’s state health care system covers some birth control costs but not all of them.

“It’s intolerable that women aren’t able to to protect themselves, aren’t able to use contraception if they make that choice, because it would cost too much,” Veran said. The measure will cost the government about 21 million euros (nearly $25 million) per year, he said. He didn't address contraception methods for men.

Contraceptive methods are free in Britain. Spain offers free birth control pills and subsidizes other forms of contraception. Several other European countries offer free or subsidized contraception.

Facing terror charges, Iran diplomat skips trial opening day

November 27, 2020

ANTWERP, Belgium (AP) — An Iranian diplomat suspected of masterminding a thwarted bomb attack against an exiled Iranian opposition group in France did not show up at the courthouse Friday on the opening day of his trial on terror charges in Belgium.

More than two years after the cross-border police operation that thwarted the attack, Assadollah Assadi and three other suspects face between five years and 20 years in prison on charges of “attempted terrorist murder and participation in the activities of a terrorist group.”

Minutes before the trial started in the city of Antwerp, lawyers from the plaintiffs and representatives of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq opposition group, or MEK, claimed without offering evidence that Assadi — who is in custody — was ordered by Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif not to attend.

The plaintiffs believe that Assadi organized the plot on orders from Iran's highest authorities. “The Iran state conspires, threatens and carries on attacks and executions," said lawyer Georges Henri Beauthier. “We have irrefutable proofs that the Iranian state gave orders from Tehran and authorized the death of thousands of people."

On June 30, 2018, Belgian police officers tipped off about a possible attack against the annual meeting of the MEK, stopped a couple traveling in a Mercedes car. In their luggage, they found 550 grams of the unstable TATP explosive and a detonator.

Belgium’s bomb disposal unit said the device was of professional quality. It could have caused a sizable explosion and panic in the crowd, estimated at 25,000 people, that had gathered that day in the French town of Villepinte, north of Paris.

Regarded by investigators as the “operational commander” of the attack, Assadi is suspected of having hired the couple years earlier to infiltrate the opposition group. A note from Belgium’s intelligence and security agency seen by The Associated Press identified Assadi as an officer of Iran’s intelligence and security ministry who operated under cover at Iran’s embassy in Vienna. Belgium’s state security officers believe he worked for the ministry’s so-called Department 312, the directorate for internal security, which is on the European Union’s list of organizations regarded as terrorist.

Assadi’s lawyer said his client contests all the charges against him and will raise procedural issues, including the question of his diplomatic immunity. Lawyers from the plaintiffs argue that diplomatic immunity does not equate to “impunity" and urged the court to order Assadi to attend the trial.

Hearings are expected to last between two and three days and a verdict is expected be delivered by the end of next month or early next year.

Iran diplomat on trial over plot to bomb opponents in France

November 25, 2020

BRUSSELS (AP) — The bomb was meant to explode in a Paris suburb during a huge rally being held by an exiled Iranian opposition group. It could have caused carnage. Instead, the explosion ripped apart the robot that army specialists were using to defuse the bomb after it was found in the car of a couple arrested in a Brussels suburb.

More than two years after the last-minute, cross-border operation that thwarted the planned attack, the couple go on trial Friday alongside two Iranian citizens, including a diplomat believed to be the plot’s mastermind.

The court case in the city of Antwerp has the potential to embarrass Iran. According to legal documents from the two-year investigation obtained by The Associated Press, Belgium’s intelligence and security agency (VSSE) says the diplomat, Assadollah Assadi, operated on orders of Iran’s authorities and brought the explosives to Europe himself.

In a note to Belgium’s federal prosecutor, the agency argued that “the planned attack was conceived in the name of Iran and at its instigation.” The prosecutor’s office did not comment on the case because the trial had yet to start.

On June 30, 2018, Belgian police officers tipped off about a possible attack against the annual meeting of the the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, stopped the couple’s Mercedes car. In their luggage, they found 550 grams of the unstable TATP explosive and a detonator. In its report, Belgium's bomb disposal unit said the device was of professional quality.

TATP has been used in several attacks in Europe in recent years, including in 2016 when suicide bombers killed 32 people on the Brussels subway and at an airport. It could have caused a sizable explosion and panic in the crowd, estimated at 25,000 people, that had gathered that day in the French town of Villepinte, north of Paris.

Regarded by investigators as the “operational commander” of the attack, Assadi is suspected of having hired the couple years earlier. According to a VSSE note, Assadi, 48, is an officer of Iran’s intelligence and security ministry who operated under cover at Iran's embassy in Vienna. Belgium’s state security officers believe he worked for the ministry’s so-called Department 312, the directorate for internal security, which is on the European Union’s list of organizations regarded as terrorist.

Assadi's lawyer, Dimitri de Beco, told the AP his client contests all the charges against him. “His defense will raise a number of procedural issues, including the question of his diplomatic immunity, since it is not disputed that he had diplomatic status, at least at the time of the facts," de Beco wrote in a short message, expressing his hope that the court case won't be a “political trial."

The MEK, once an armed organization with a base in Iraq, is the most structured among exiled Iranian opposition groups, and is detested by Iranian authorities. It was removed from EU and U.S. terrorism lists several years ago after denouncing violence and getting western politicians to lobby on its behalf. The MEK supports U.S. President Donald Trump’s hard line on Iran and backs U.S. sanctions on the country.

Among dozens of prominent guests at the rally that day were Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani; Newt Gingrich, former conservative speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives; and former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt.

The organization’s leader, Maryam Rajavi, has alleged without offering evidence that Assadi received his orders from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “The regime’s leaders must be prosecuted and face justice,” she said last month during a video conference with journalists.

Assadi allegedly recruited the couple — Amir Saadouni and Nasimeh Naami, who were of Iranian heritage but lived in Antwerp — to obtain information about the Iranian opposition. The fourth suspect, Mehrdad Arefani, is a Brussels resident suspected of traveling to Villepinte on the day of the planned attack. Investigators found that he was in possession of a phone with Assadi’s number.

Travel records obtained by the AP show Assadi made several trips to Iran in the months leading up to the rally, returning from the last one little more than a week before the thwarted attack. According to a note from the prosecution’s files, Assadi carried the explosives on the commercial flight to Austria. He allegedly handed the bomb over to Saadouni and Naami during a meeting in a Pizza Hut restaurant in Luxembourg just two days before they were arrested.

Both have denied they were aware that the diplomat — whose code name was Daniel — had given them a bomb. Naami said she believed the parcel contained fireworks. Belgium’s bomb disposal unit said the triacetone triperoxide charge in the couple's Mercedes car was ready to use. It was “wrapped in plastic and concealed in the lining of a vanity case.” They also found a digital remote trigger in a small bag belonging to Naami that contained feminine hygiene items.

Upon his arrest, investigators also found a red notebook in Assadi’s car with instructions on how to use the bomb. The analysis of the suspects’ text messages and emails revealed they used code language to communicate, with “PlayStation 4” the alleged name for the explosive device.

The French side of the investigation also established that Assadi visited Villepinte during the 2017 MEK rally, possibly on a reconnaissance trip. If convicted, the four suspects face between five years and 20 years in prison on charges of “attempted terrorist murder and participation in the activities of a terrorist group.” Hearings will last between two and three days and a verdict is expected be delivered by the end of next month.

AP Correspondent Jon Gambrell in Dubai and Elaine Ganley in Paris contributed.

France, Germany plan billions in pandemic recovery spending

April 27, 2021

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — France and Germany together laid out plans for billions in spending from the European Union's pandemic recovery fund aimed at fighting climate change and boosting the use of digital technology across the economy.

The finance ministers of the EU's two biggest economies on Tuesday underlined their joint determination to use the spending to transform Europe's economy and get the continent growing again as it lags behind the U.S. and China in rebounding from the pandemic recession.

Under the fund's formula, France should get around 40 billion euros ($48 billion) while German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said his country planned about 28 billion euros ($36 billion) in spending. Scholz said that half the money would go to environmentally friendly projects and a quarter to spreading the use of digital technology. He said the fund would build on domestic relief and stimulus measures already passed by the German government.

He called the fund “a groundbreaking step for Europe.” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire urged the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, to quickly evaluate the plans so that money can start flowing to members states from the 750 billion euro ($906 billion) fund as early as July, noting that the U.S. and China have recovered faster. He said that since the fund was approved “we have lost too much time” and that “Europe must remain in the race.” Last year, France’s economy shrank by 8.3% amid the virus crisis, the worst slump since World War II, according to national statistics institute INSEE.

They said the new spending, funded by shared debt, would avoid mistakes made in the wake of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis and recession, when countries focused excessively on cutting spending and closing deficits. Le Maire said “today the priority is clearly to invest massively, not to consolidate public finances. We have drawn lessons from the past.”

Spain’s Cabinet also approved its proposal for how it wants to invest the recovery funds. Spain, which has suffered heavily from the pandemic, is set to receive 140 billion euros ($166 billion) — half in direct payments and the other half in loans — from the EU's recovery plan, second only to Italy. In line with EU priorities, Spain’s left-wing government has placed a heavy emphasis on creating a greener economy while boosting productivity for an economy that shrunk by 11% last year.

The money from the fund, which was agreed in July 2020, comes with pressure from Brussels to address problems identified by the European Commission's review of members states' economic policies. Spain, for instance, is being asked to overhaul labor laws, tax practices and pensions. Countries with low tax regimes such as Ireland or Cyprus are under pressure to discourage aggressive tax planning by multinational companies.

Italy's 221.1 billion euro ($267.3 billion) recovery plan includes steps to reduce its backlog of court cases, considered a drag on businesses that can't get commercial disputes resolved quickly.

Sylvie Corbet reported from Paris.

France: Ministers accused of dining at secret restaurants

April 05, 2021

PARIS (AP) — French authorities are investigating accusations that government ministers and others dined in secret restaurants in violation of pandemic restrictions. The Paris prosecutor’s office said an investigation was opened Sunday into possible charges of endangerment and undeclared labor, and to identify the organizers and participants of the alleged gatherings.

A documentary that aired on French network M6 over the weekend included an unidentified man saying that he had eaten in two or three clandestine restaurants “with a certain number of ministers.” Government members quickly denied knowledge of such wrongdoing. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin asked police to look into the claims.

The prosecutor’s office said Monday that the investigation is continuing despite reports that the man featured in the documentary had retracted his claim. French restaurants have been closed since October to slow the spread of the coronavirus virus. France just entered a new partial lockdown in response to intensive care units again filling with COVID-19 patients.

Government spokesman Gabriel Attal said on LCI television Sunday night that authorities have been investigating reports of clandestine parties and restaurants for months, and 200 suspects have been identified and face “heavy punishment.”

Government ministers “have a duty to be totally irreproachable and exemplary.” Attal said.

Medical workers conflicted by France's lockdown that isn't

March 19, 2021

PARIS (AP) — When nurse Anaelle Aeschliman started her 12-hour night shift caring for unconscious patients with COVID-19, the French prime minister was announcing new restrictions to combat the resurgent coronavirus epidemic in Paris.

She was not impressed. The 26-year-old had been hoping for a full nationwide lockdown to slow the streams of gravely ill patients filling ICUs like hers, in the west of Paris. Instead, Prime Minister Jean Castex announced a mishmash of measures — including closures of nonessential shops — that are mostly limited to Paris and northern France and don't oblige people to spend most of the day indoors. Announced Thursday night, they take effect on Friday night, when Aeschliman will be back in the ICU, for another 12-hour shift.

"Locking down region by region isn’t enough. I think it’s a sanitary suicide,” she said Friday morning, as she went home for a shower and some sleep after working through the night. “I admit I was a bit disappointed that we aren’t being locked down nationwide," she said. "When you look at the numbers, they’re unsustainable, and it is going to become ever-harder as the virus continues to circulate.”

In March 2020, when France first locked down with some of the toughest restrictions in Europe, the government exhorted people to stay home. This time, it is, in effect, urging them to go out and get some fresh air.

People in the Paris region and in the north of the country covered by the new rules can walk as long as they like in a day, within a 10-kilometer (six-mile) radius of their homes and carrying a paper authorizing the stroll. Schools will remain open.

The new measures affect about 21 million people in the country of 67 million. At the same time, however, a change in the nationwide curfew will give citizens an extra hour of freedom. It will start at 7 p.m. instead of the previous 6 p.m., and run until 6 a.m. Restaurants, bars, cinemas, gyms, museums, theaters and concert halls have been shut for almost five months.

For Pierre Squara, the doctor in charge Friday at the ICU unit of the Ambroise Paré private hospital where Aeschliman also works, encouraging people to leave their Paris apartments makes sense, especially with spring around the corner.

“Now that good weather is coming and people will be able to go outside, it will disperse the virus a bit more,” he said. "It is better to be outside than to be four people in an apartment of 25 square meters. Because Paris apartments are small.”

Government spokesman Gabriel Attal said the government had sought to draw conclusions from better scientific knowledge of the virus and from France’s two previous lockdowns in spring and autumn. “Everything we can do outside, we need to do it outside,” he told RTL radio.

Attal urged people to limit social interactions, keep wearing masks outdoors and limit gatherings to six people maximum. As the measures apply for at least four weeks and travel between regions will be forbidden without a compelling reason, many people were rushing on Friday to Paris train stations to leave for other less-affected regions.

French authorities also announced that the country is resuming shots with the vaccine made by AstraZeneca on Friday. Castex was to be vaccinated in the afternoon, aiming to show “confidence” in the product.

France on Thursday reported about 35,000 new confirmed infections in 24 hours nationwide, numbers that have steadily increased in recent weeks. The variant first identified in the U.K. accounts for most infections, and around 250 people are dying each day.

Powdering sleeping beauty's nose: Virus eases Louvre works

February 20, 2021

PARIS (AP) — The 518-year-old Mona Lisa has seen many things in her life on a wall, but rarely this: Almost four months with no Louvre visitors. As she stares out through bulletproof glass into the silent Salle des Etats, in what was once the world's most-visited museum, her celebrated smile could almost denote relief. A bit further on, the white marble Venus de Milo is for once free of her girdle of picture-snapping visitors.

It’s uncertain when the Paris museum will reopen, after being closed on Oct. 30 in line with the French government’s virus containment measures. But those lucky enough to get in benefit from a rare private look at collections covering 9,000 years of human history -- with plenty of space to breathe.

That's normally sorely lacking in a museum that's blighted by its own success: Before the pandemic, staff walked out complaining they couldn't handle the overcrowding, with up to 30,000-40,000 visitors a day.

The forced closure has also granted museum officials a golden opportunity to carry out long-overdue refurbishments that were simply not possible with nearly 10 million visitors a year. Unlike the first lockdown, which brought all Louvre activities to a halt, the second has seen some 250 of the museum employees remain fully operational.

An army of curators, restorers and workers are cleaning sculptures, reordering artifacts, checking inventories, reorganizing entrances and conducting restorations, including in the Egyptian Wing and the Grande Galerie, the museum’s largest hall that is being fully renovated.

“We’re taking advantage of the museum’s closure to carry out a number of major works, speed up maintenance operations and start repair works that are difficult to schedule when the museum is operating normally,” Laurent le Guedart, the Louvre’s Architectural Heritage and Gardens Director told AP from inside the Grande Galerie.

As le Guedart spoke, restorers were standing atop scaffolds taking scientific probes of the walls in preparation for a planned restoration, travelling back to the 18th century through layer after layer of paint.

Around the corner the sound of carpenters taking up floorboards was faintly audible. They were putting in the cables for a new security system. Previously, these jobs could only be done on a Tuesday, the Louvre's only closed day in the week. Now hammers are tapping, machines drilling and brushes scrubbing to a full week schedule, slowed down only slightly by social distancing measures.

In total, ten large-scale projects that were on hold since last March are under way — and progressing fast. This includes works in the Etruscan and Italian Halls, and the gilded Salon Carre. A major restoration of the ancient Egyptian tomb chapel of Akhethotep from 2400BC is also underway.

“When the museum reopens, everything will be perfect for its visitors — this Sleeping Beauty will have had the time to powder her nose,” said Elisabeth Antoine-Konig, Artifacts Department Curator. “Visitors will be happy to see again these now well-lit rooms with polished floors and remodeled display cases.”

Initially, only visitors with pre-booked reservations will be granted entry in line with virus safety precautions. Those who cannot wait are still able to see the Louvre's treasure trove of art in virtual tours online.

Adamson reported from Leeds, England.

As the virus crisis drags on, hard-hit French youth struggle

February 16, 2021

PARIS (AP) — On a recent evening, Leïla Ideddaim waited to receive a bag of food, along with hundreds of other French young people who are unable to make ends meet. She saw the chitchat that accompanied the handout as a welcome byproduct, given her intense isolation during the pandemic.

The 21-year-old student in hotel and restaurant management has seen her plans turned upside down by the virus crisis. With restaurants and tourist sites shuttered and France under a 6 p.m. curfew, her career prospects are uncertain. Odd jobs that were supposed to keep her going during her studies are hard to come by.

“I’m in a fog,” said Ideddaim, who moved to Paris last year and is now struggling to meet both her basic needs and her emotional ones. She is not alone. The long lines of young people waiting for food aid that stretch through Paris neighborhoods several times a week are a dramatic symbol of the toll the coronavirus has taken on France’s youth.

The pandemic has devastated economies the world over, pushing vulnerable people deeper into poverty or tipping some into it for the first time. In France, the economic fallout has weighed particularly heavily on young people — and their woes have only been compounded by disruptions to their studies and social interactions.

Nearly a quarter of French young people can’t find work — two-and-a-half times the national unemployment rate and one of the highest in the European Union's 27 nations. Many university students now rely on food aid and several organizations have rallied to meet the need.

The pandemic has led to a surge in mental health complaints that authorities say are most acute in people without work, those in financial hardship and young adults. A hotline devoted to students has seen a surge in calls, and young people have streamed into psychiatric wards.

As French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged, “it’s hard to be 20” in coronavirus times. Other European countries have also noted a particularly heavy toll on young people. In Belgium, some areas are giving aid to students to help them pay for food, rent, transport and psychological help. In Germany, a study by the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf found about one in three children are suffering from pandemic-related anxiety, depression or are exhibiting psychosomatic symptoms like headaches or stomach aches.

For Ideddaim, who has to support herself, the pandemic means a spreadsheet that doesn't always add up. Each month, she needs over 800 euros ($970) for housing, transport and utility bills. She could not get a well-paid apprenticeship because restaurants are closed and hotels are in a precarious situation.

Instead, an internship at a campground 45 kilometers (28 miles) east of Paris brings in 300 euros a month — and alleviates her isolation. She also earns some money from occasional temp work in shopping centers. Still, she has almost spent all her savings.

“I draw up a Google sheet, and I put down my expenses and my fixed costs every month. So I look at how much comes in, and I calculate what I’m left with and where I can tighten my belt — on food for instance,” she said.

Ideddaim is just one of many needy students being served by Linkee, an organization that has long collected and distributed unused food to fight waste but only recently turned its attention to students.

Farid Khelef, 28, came from Algeria to study in France. He would not have imagined he would one day be waiting for food aid. “Before, I was working as an electrician in parallel with my studies. Because of the health crisis, it’s been almost four months that I have no job,” he said while waiting for a bag from Linkee.

The organization began offering meals and fresh food to students in October — and their twice-weekly handouts now serve about 500 people, up from 200. “We are a safety net for all these students ... who don’t have enough money to buy some food and have no other solution than coming to get some quality food and at the same time find a friendly atmosphere,” said Julien Meimon, the organization’s president.

With a smile, Ideddaim showed her bag filled with salad, cauliflower, apples, smoked salmon, yogurts and chocolate. But she comes to the food distribution site for more than just basic sustenance. “It’s a great morale boost — to know that I’m going to eat well and to come to a place with plenty of people and everyone is in a good mood,” she said.

With only three weeks of in-person classes since September and being new to the city, she has struggled to create the social connections that are essential to building an adult life. “It has not been easy to integrate, to meet with people,” she said. In the meantime, she enjoys chatting on the phone with her grandmother, who also lives alone, and is looking forward to working this summer in the Atlantic seaside resort of Biscarrosse — as long as restaurants reopen.

Many young people are similarly struggling. Nightline in Paris, a hotline for students, has seen a 40% jump in calls since the country entered its first lockdown in March. Depression among people aged 18 to 24 has jumped from 16.5% at the beginning of April to 31.5% in November, during the country’s second lockdown, according to France’s national health agency, Sante Publique France.

Authorities have noticed the problem and, starting this month, they have asked universities to allow students to go back to classes one day per week to help them regain some sense of normalcy. The institutions have also started providing 1-euro meals.

There are concerns the pandemic could have long-term effects on youth. In the U.K., the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank estimated that young people will have missed out on more than half a year of face-to-face learning, or more than 5% of their total time in school, by the end of the country's latest national lockdown. The lost education could cut average lifetime earnings by 40,000 pounds ($55,325) per student, it estimated.

Ideddaim, who prefers to look on the bright side, said she feels privileged to get food aid at all. "That kind of aid does not exist in many countries, and we're lucky enough in France to have that," she said.

Samuel Petrequin in Brussels, Danica Kirka in London and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this report.

Surging virus in French African outpost reveals inequalities

February 10, 2021

MAMOUDZOU, Mayotte (AP) — Mayotte’s main tourist office stands nearly empty, a lonely tropical outpost overlooking a people-less port. Its only hospital, however, is overwhelmed. The demand for intensive care beds is more than triple the supply, as medical workers fight to contain the French Indian Ocean territory’s worst coronavirus outbreak yet.

The Mayotte islands are the poorest corner of the European Union, tucked between Madagascar and the mainland coast of Mozambique in southern Africa. They have been the last spot in France to receive any coronavirus vaccines.

Local authorities feel forgotten and say their difficulties in fighting the virus reflect long-standing inequalities between France’s majority-white mainland and its far-flung multiracial former colonies.

The French army is sending in medical workers and a few ICU beds, but the temporary aid will only go so far on the islands where masks are a luxury, where nearly a third of the region's 300,000 people have no running water and where a new lockdown is suffocating livelihoods.

“We used to work at the big market to sell things, to have money to feed our families,” said Ahamada Soulaimana Soilihi, a 40-year-old father of six living in a shantytown in Mayotte’s capital city of Mamoudzou.

Then last week, authorities shut down Mayotte’s economy, ordering people to stay home to combat fast-growing cases of the virus variant dominant in South Africa. “How can we live without work, without being able to move, without anything?” Soilihi asked.

While ocean waves lap empty beaches and police patrol the quiet streets of Mamoudzou’s business district, many people in Soilihi's Bandrajou neighborhood seem unaware of lockdown rules or social distancing measures. Clusters of children play barefoot on the dusty ground, girls carry buckets on their heads to fetch water from a collective pump, an older woman at an informal street stall braids a younger woman’s hair. Almost no one wears a mask.

Health workers acknowledge there’s no easy solution. The virus is attacking Mayotte in a “brutal and rapid” way, Dominique Voynet, the head of the regional health service, told The Associated Press. “All indicators are getting darker and darker ... people are dropping like flies.”

Mayotte’s weekly infection rate is now nearly four times higher than the national French average. The territory has registered 11,447 virus cases since the pandemic began — a third of them over the past two weeks — and at least 68 deaths, double the per capita virus death rate nationwide.

That made it all the more disappointing that Mayotte was the last French overseas region to get a vaccine shipment, a month after the first doses landed in Paris, more than 8,400 kilometers (5,000 miles) away.

“We were equipped much later than other (French) regions, to my great dismay,” Voynet said. The French Foreign Legion delivered the super-freezer needed to store Mayotte's initial deliveries of 950 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines. More shipments have trickled in, and the territory has so far vaccinated 2,400 people, or less than 1% of its population.

In Paris, government spokesman Gabriel Attal initially argued that Mayotte’s young population – just 4% are over 60 – meant the region was a low priority for vaccination, noting its “demographic and geographic realities which are obviously different” from the mainland.

But now that infections are raging, France's central government is increasingly worried. Doctors are transporting several ICU patients per day to nearby Reunion island. The French military on Sunday flew in medical workers. The regional health service is organizing water deliveries to encourage the poorest to stay home.

Many Indian Ocean islands and countries on Africa's mainland are facing similar — or worse — outbreaks and vaccine delays. Madagascar, with 27 million people, does not yet have vaccines. Mozambique, with 30 million people, has imposed a curfew to battle a surge driven by the variant dominant in South Africa, and doesn’t have any vaccines either. Neither do the nearby Comoros islands for its population of 850,000.

The largest country in the region, South Africa, with 60 million people, has reported more than 1.47 million cases, including over 46,800 deaths. Its health minister announced Wednesday the government will be giving out the as-yet unapproved Johnson & Johnson vaccine to health care workers after a small test showed that the AstraZeneca vaccine offers only minimal protection against the variant dominant in the country.

Mayotte lawmaker Mansour Kamardine doesn’t understand why his homeland is in such dire straits. When the rest of the Comoros islands chain voted in the 1970s for independence from France after a century-and-a-half of colonial rule, Mayotte residents voted overwhelmingly to stay French.

Today, Mayotte has the same administrative status as any region on mainland France — one of the world’s richest countries. The territory uses the euro as currency and is represented in the European Parliament. A 2003 law promises “liberty, equality and fraternity” to all people on France’s overseas lands.

But when the virus hit, “Mayotte was forgotten,” Kamardine told the AP. “We are far from the eyes, we are far from the heart” of French power. He wrote to the government to plead for more permanent ICU beds, to no avail. The whole territory has just 16.

Mayotte is among nine territories – mostly French – with a special status in the EU as an “outermost region,” which have access to development funds aimed at reducing the economic gap with the European continent left over from colonial times.

But with Europe now facing its own vaccine woes and protracted economic crisis, Mayotte’s prospects look dim. Piles of red plastic Coca-Cola chairs collect dust in a Mamoudzou cafe, shaded by palm trees, where a sign points toward Tokyo, 11,230 kilometers (nearly 7,000 miles) away. Metal grates hide storefronts. Business travel and tourism have plunged as the pandemic wears on.

At the Caribou restaurant, bar and hotel, Chaima Nombamba manages the takeout counter — the only piece of the business still allowed to operate. The hotel shut down because of “a flood of cancellations.” Most of the restaurant staff is on temporary unemployment — a French government coronavirus program that those in the informal economy don’t enjoy.

“Yes, the health crisis is very serious, and there is a deadly impact for some of us. But is it the moment to punish small businesses, notably our sector of activity, which is really hit hard, which is being killed bit by bit by little fires?” she asked.

“We don’t know what tomorrow will bring. We can’t make plans or anticipate certain things because it’s changing every day,” she said. “So where is the solution?”

Charlton reported from Paris. Andrew Meldrum in Johannesburg contributed.

France charges an alleged organizer of giant New Year's rave

January 04, 2021

PARIS (AP) — An alleged organizer of an illegal New Year's Eve rave that at least 2,500 people attended for more than a day in western France was charged Monday with endangering lives amid a coronavirus curfew and other restrictions.

The 22-year-old man also faced property damage and drug charges among other offenses, and was placed in custody, prosecutor Philippe Astruc told a news conference. The suspect acknowledged participating in the organization of the event, Astruc said.

Ravers from France and abroad converged Thursday night on a hangar in Lieuron, in Brittany, to party into the new year. They left Saturday morning about 36 hours later. Officials said the partygoers attacked the police on the first night, torching a police vehicle and slightly injuring three officers with bottles and stones.

The suspect was arrested Saturday after a police search found money, illegal drugs and sound equipment in the Brittany town of Iffendic. Astruc said investigators were working to identify other organizers in order to prosecute them.

Police have fined more than 1,600 people, including 1,200 for violating virus-related rules and over 200 for drug-related offenses, Astruc added. Less than 5% of participants were wearing a mask during the party, he said.

The investigation also showed that illicit drugs were supplied at the site, the prosecutor said. The party took place despite France’s nationwide nighttime curfew, which seeks to dissuade people from gathering during the pandemic.

The Regional Health Agency of Brittany warned that partygoers had a high risk of spreading the virus and urged participants to self-isolate for a week and get a test in seven days. France has reported more than 65,000 virus-related deaths.

French government seeks to set age for sexual consent at 15

February 10, 2021

PARIS (AP) — France’s government wants to set the age of sexual consent at 15 and make it easier to punish long-ago child sexual abuse, amid growing public pressure and a wave of online testimonies about rape and other sexual violence by parents and authority figures.

Calling such treatment of children “intolerable,” the justice ministry said in a statement that “the government is determined to act quickly to implement the changes that our society expects.” “An act of sexual penetration by an adult on a minor under 15 will be considered a rape,” Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti said Tuesday on France-2 television. Consent would no longer be able to be cited to diminish the charges, but exceptions would be made for teenagers having consensual sex, he said.

The change would still need to be enshrined in law, but the announcement is a major step after years of efforts to toughen French protection for children victims of rape and sexual violence. A push to set France’s first age of consent three years ago in the wake of the global #MeToo movement failed amid legal complications. But the effort has gained new momentum since accusations emerged last month of incestuous sexual abuse involving a prominent French political expert, Olivier Duhamel. That unleashed an online #MeTooInceste movement in France that led to hundreds of similar testimonies.

The Justice Ministry says it is in discussions with victims’ groups about toughening punishment of incest and extending or abolishing the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse, which has prevented prosecution in several high-profile cases in France in recent years.

It also says it wants “to ensure that victims of the same perpetrator do not receive different legal treatment,” which could broaden the scope to prosecute people accused of abuse of multiple people over decades.

In the Duhamel case, the Paris prosecutor opened an investigation into alleged “rapes and sexual abuses by a person exercising authority” over a child following public accusations made in a book by his stepdaughter that he abused her twin brother in the 1980s, when the siblings were 13-years-old.

Duhamel said he was “the target of personal attacks” and stepped down from his many professional positions, including as a respected TV commentator and head of National Foundation of Political Sciences. The foundation manages the prestigious Sciences Po university in Paris, whose director Frederic Mion resigned this week amid the fallout from the accusations.

Eiffel Tower needs blowtorch for ice as snow blankets Europe

February 10, 2021

PARIS (AP) — Workers at the Eiffel Tower used a blowtorch to melt the ice collecting on its surfaces and snow was blocking roads and halting trains and school buses Wednesday across northern France. Amid a European cold snap, areas in Normandy and Brittany unused to such icy conditions were closing highways for lack of snow-clearing equipment. In parts of the Paris region, local authorities halted school buses and urged parents to keep their children at home.

Snow blanketed the French capital and froze the Eiffel Tower. “When negative temperatures return, my floors get partially covered with ice! To get rid of it, we need to use a blowtorch because ice-control salt is too corrosive for the metal,” tweeted the monument, which has been closed to the public for months because of coronavirus restrictions.

Parts of central and northern Europe as well as Britain have been gripped by a cold weather front since the weekend. Heavy snowfall tangled traffic and stranded drivers in Germany and the Czech Republic.

Some took advantage of the frosty climes. Cross-country skiers glided across the Charles Bridge in Prague, children sledded in the usually snowless parks of Belgium's capital of Brussels, and the deep winter freeze has reawakened the Dutch national obsession with skating on frozen canals.

In Paris, restaurants, bistros and bars plead for work, aid

December 14, 2020

PARIS (AP) — While French chef Michel Solignac labored over his hot stoves, his baby son Nicolas would watch him from his playpen in the corner of the kitchen. The now 30-year-old Nicolas grew up with cooking in his genes and, quite naturally, took over the restaurant when his father hung up his apron a few years ago.

The coronavirus has now shattered their world. “A sledgehammer blow,” Michel Solignac says. The cash reserves that he squirreled away over decades for a rainy day when the restaurant was thriving have carried the business through this disastrous year. But the little that's left will be gone within six months if Nicolas can't reopen the restaurant and bring back paying customers soon, Solignac says.

“We have to cling on," he says. “His mother and I didn’t build all this just to watch it collapse.” Wearing his tall white chef’s hat, the 63-year-old retired restauranteur joined a protest Monday in Paris by bosses and workers from France's catering, hotel, event management and other service industries battered by the pandemic year, when the world-famous pleasures they offer have largely been put on hold in the name of curbing infections.

Ranging from mournful wedding organizers and out-of-work cocktail waiters to distraught chefs and anxious hotel directors, the crowd of around 1,000 people pleaded for respite, for more financial aid from the government and, for those forced by the government to close, to be allowed to earn a living again.

Waitress Sandra Barbette said she desperately misses “the sharing, the conviviality” of serving the regulars in her Paris restaurant shuttered like other French eateries and watering holes — except for takeout service — since October. That and other lockdown measures have helped bring down infections, but also have come at great cost to the French way of life.

“Clients have sent me text messages to say, ‘We miss you,’” Barbette says. “I love my job. I miss it so much.” Restaurant and bar owners who are getting government aid said the payments are merely keeping them on life support, but nothing more. The government has indicated that restaurants and bars might be allowed to reopen from Jan. 20 if infections don't surge again. But the economy minister said Monday that he couldn't guarantee that the date will hold.

While Solignac came to Paris to demonstrate, his son was back at their restaurant in the Correze region of south-central France, preparing takeout dishes. That lockdown business brings in only a fraction of the money they used to make, but it does help keep their minds off their many worries, Solignac says.

“Psychologically, I don't know how I would react if I was obliged to shut down," he says. “It really would hurt.”

Germany, France gear up for new lockdowns as virus surges

October 28, 2020

BERLIN (AP) — Germany and France were bracing for new lockdowns Wednesday, as governments sought to stop the fast-rising tide of coronavirus cases that are beginning to fill European hospitals. French markets opened lower on expectations that President Emmanuel Macron will announce tough measures during a televised evening address to the nation.

Doctors in France are calling on the government to impose a new nationwide lockdown, noting that more than half of the country's intensive care units are now occupied by COVID-19 patients and medical staff are under increasing strains.

Most parts of France were colored deep red on a map representing COVID-cases from the European Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, signifying more than 240 cases per 100,000 people in the past two weeks. On Tuesday alone, the country had a big spike in the number of daily deaths from COVID-19, recording an additional 523 deaths and another 33,417 new infections.

Belgium, the Netherlands, most of Spain and the Czech Republic are seeing similarly high rates of infection, while Germany was still colored in orange — indicating that the average number of new cases there is still under 120 per 100,000 over the last 14 days.

Still, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was pressing governors of the country’s 16 states to quickly agree a partial lockdown Wednesday that could include further restrictions on public gatherings and the closure of bars and restaurants.

The plan has caused anguish in Germany's hospitality industry, with thousands of venue owners staging a protest Wednesday at Berlin’s landmark Brandenburg Gate to demand further financial support from the government.

While Germany has fared better than many of its neighboring European countries during the pandemic, officials warn that it, too, is beginning to lose control of the situation. Economists said further restrictions need to be carefully calibrated to avoid dealing a second severe blow to businesses.

“A national lockdown, as we have seen in, ravages an economy and would add significant complications to the ongoing economic recovery,” said Fiona Cincotta, an analyst at online trading firm GAIN Capital.

But Thomas Gitzel, chief economist at Liechtenstein's VP Bank Group, said a temporary lockdown could be less harmful than a prolonged slump in consumer spending as infection levels remain stubbornly high.

“One doesn't need to be a virologist to conclude that, without further restrictions, the number of new daily infections will likely rise,” said Gitzel, adding that a short, strict lockdown could be effective. “The strict containment measures in March and April laid the ground for an economically successful summer.”

Wales has opted for that short, sharp approach, with a 17-day lockdown in which people cannot even drive out of their region to England. Officials in Germany have cited the failure by authorities in the neighboring Czech Republic to maintain their springtime successes against the virus, saying they opened too widely in the summer.

The Czech Health Ministry said the country's day-to-day case increase hit a new record high of 15,663 on Tuesday — as many as Germany, which has eight times the population. The Czech government has further tightened its regulations, imposing a nationwide curfew between 9 p.m and 6 a.m. that started Wednesday. It previously limited free movement, closed stores, schools and restaurants, made it mandatory to wear face masks indoors and outdoors and banned sport competitions, but the number of infections has continued to rise.

Several demonstrations against the virus restrictions were planned for Wednesday in the capital of Prague. Even Sweden, which avoided a national lockdown and generally imposed far lighter measures than other European countries, is now urging people to avoid shopping centers and shops and stay away from public transportation.

The World Health Organization said more than 2 million confirmed coronavirus cases were reported last week — the shortest time ever for such an exponential increase. It said for the second consecutive week, the European region accounted for the biggest proportion of new cases, with more than 1.3 million cases or about 46% of the worldwide total. The U.N. health agency said deaths were also on the rise in Europe, with about a 35% spike since the previous week. Overall, Europe has seen more than 250,000 virus-related deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

The WHO also noted that hospitalizations and ICU occupancy due to COVID-19 increased in 21 countries across Europe.

Maria Cheng in London and Karel Janicek in Prague contributed to this report.

French doctor warns his country has 'lost control' of virus

October 27, 2020

PARIS (AP) — A French doctor warned Monday that his country has “lost control of the epidemic,” a day after health authorities reported more than 52,000 new coronavirus cases as nations across Europe enact more sweeping restrictions to try to slow surging infection rates.

Spain — the first European country to surpass 1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases — declared a state of emergency Sunday that included a nationwide overnight curfew, a cap of six people on social gatherings and possible travel bans in and out of the hardest-hit regions.

The effect was clear on Barcelona's famed Las Ramblas promenade, which was deserted Sunday night when it normally would have been teeming with people. In two major Italian cities, people took to the streets amid a pushback from small sections of society to new restrictions. On Friday, demonstrators in Naples protested a locally imposed 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew and clashed with police. On Saturday night, far-right and neo-fascist groups led a similar protest in Rome against a curfew. Another protest is planned for Tuesday in Milan.

Dr. Jean-François Delfraissy, president of the scientific council that advises the French government on the virus, said the country is in a “very difficult, even critical situation." "There probably are more than 50,000 new cases every day. Our estimate at the Scientific Council is closer to 100,000 – twice as many,” Delfraissy told RTL radio. “Between those who aren’t tested and asymptomatic patients, we’re close to that number of cases. This means the virus is spreading extremely fast.”

France declared a state of emergency earlier this month and has been imposing more and more restrictions since September to try to ease the pressure on France’s hospitals, where COVID-19 patients occupy more than half of all ICU beds.

Dr. Eric Caumes, head of the infections and tropical diseases department at Paris’ Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital, said the country needs to lock down again. “We lost control of the epidemic but that doesn’t date from yesterday,” he said on broadcaster Franceinfo. “We lost control of the epidemic several weeks ago already.”

Europe’s confirmed death toll has surpassed 250,000 according to a count by Johns Hopkins University, which puts the global toll at more than 1.1 million. A senior World Health Organization official said national lockdowns could be avoided if people are willing to make sacrifices.

Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, said she hoped countries would use other tools to stop transmission, including strengthening their surveillance, testing and contact tracing systems.

“We can avoid national lockdowns,” Van Kerkhove said. She said people should take personal responsibility for everyday decisions, like whether or not they should go to crowded places, avoiding closed settings and postponing social gatherings.

Italy, the first country in the West to get slammed by COVID-19, took new measures over the weekend to try to rein in the new outbreak, ordering restaurants and bars closed by 6 p.m., and shutting down gyms, pools and movie theaters.

The measures, which took effect Monday, also require high schools to transition to at least 75% distance learning while letting younger students remain in classrooms. Indoor and outdoor gatherings, including those for religious reasons, are barred, and the government is strongly recommending people avoid having house guests and traveling in the country except for work, health or other necessities.

The new restrictions sent Rome resident Matteo Serba to the city's Villa Borghese for a run Monday. “I used to go to gym. Now jogging in the park is the alternative," Serba said. "Unfortunately, we have no other alternatives but coming here. It’s sad but we have been asked to do it and we comply with the rules.”

Italy has been registering around 20,000 new confirmed infections per day and health authorities have warned that some hospital COVID-19 wards risk hitting the saturation point in the next week or two.

British authorities are likely to tighten restrictions on more areas of the country this week, amid mixed signs about whether measures introduced in the last few weeks have stemmed a steep rise in infections.

Government scientific advisers say there are some signs the increase has begun to level off since a three-tier system of restrictions came into force, but that it is too soon to be certain. A large chunk of northern England, including the major cities of Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield, has been placed in the top tier of “very high” risk, with pubs closed and people from different households barred from mixing. The government said that Warrington, another large town in the northwest, will be added to the top tier on Tuesday. Another city, Nottingham, will follow on Thursday, authorities there said.

Lawmakers in the Czech Republic, which has been one of the hardest-hit nations in the pandemic's resurgence in Europe, are set to approve this week a government plan to draft up to 300 military health personnel from NATO and EU countries to help treat the influx of patients.

They will help their Czech colleagues at Prague’s military hospital and at a field hospital for 500 patients that the armed forces completed over the weekend at Prague’s exhibition ground. The first group of 28 National Guard doctors from the United States is expected to arrive later this week.

Authorities also said they are canceling Prague's major Christmas markets because of the virus. The Bavarian city of Nuremberg also canceled its big Christmas market, one of Germany’s best-known and a major tourist draw. City officials originally wanted the bustling Christkindlesmarkt to go ahead under strict hygiene rules, but Mayor Marcus Koenig said they concluded it would send the wrong signal as virus cases rise.

“This decision is very difficult for us. The Christkindlesmarkt with its great tradition belongs to Nuremberg,” Koenig said. Germany's rising coronavirus numbers also prompted Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party to delay for the second time a decision on who will become its new leader — one that had already been pushed by the pandemic from the spring to December.

Whoever wins the Christian Democratic Union’s leadership will be in a position to become the center-right candidate to succeed Merkel as chancellor in a German election expected next fall, although that isn’t guaranteed.

Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands. Associated Press reporters across Europe contributed.

Explosive kills 3 French army soldiers on mission in Mali

December 28, 2020

PARIS (AP) — The French presidency said three French soldiers were killed Monday in Mali when an improvised explosive device hit their armored vehicle. The soldiers were participating in a military operation in the Hombori area of Mali’s central Mopti province, part of a larger mission aiming at fighting Islamist extremists in Africa’s Sahel region, the French presidency said in a statement.

Defense Minister Florence Parly said the soldiers were working "in an area where terrorist groups are attacking civilians and threatening the regional stability." Parly said they were involved in a mission aiming at helping Mali to gradually be able to ensure its own security. The defense minister did not provide further details.

France has more than 5,000 troops deployed in West Africa to help fight extremist groups as part of Operation Barkhane. French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute “with the greatest respect” to the three soldiers who died. He cited France’s determination to “pursue the fight against terrorism” in the region.

Islamic extremist rebels were forced from power in northern Mali after a 2013 French-led military operation. The rebels regrouped in the desert and now launch frequent attacks on the Malian army and its allies.

France surpasses 1 million confirmed virus cases amid spike

October 23, 2020

PARIS (AP) — French health authorities say France has recorded over 1 million confirmed coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic, becoming the second country in Western Europe after Spain to reach that number of known infections.

The national health agency released new figures showing that tests had confirmed at least 1,041,075 cases in France this year, including 42,032 new cases reported in the past 24 hours. Experts say the real numbers of infections are probably much higher than the ones governments around the world are reporting because of a lack of tests early in the pandemic, asymptomatic cases and other issues.

Like other countries in Europe, France has seen its daily case counts rise sharply in recent weeks as the virus rebounds in Europe. COVID-19 patients now occupy more than 42% of ICU beds nationally, and 64% in the Paris region.

More than 11,000 new COVID-19 patients have been hospitalized in the past week, including 1,714 who are in intensive care, according to the national health agency. Speaking earlier Friday after visiting a hospital in Pontoise, a suburb north of Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron said “the epidemic is very strongly accelerating.”

The French government has expanded an overnight curfew it imposed in eight urban areas of France last week to encompass 38 more regions and Polynesia. The 9 p.m.-6 a.m. curfews and other public health measures will last for “at least six weeks,” Macron said.

The extension means that 46 million of France’s 67 million people will be under curfews that prohibit them from being out and about during those hours except for limited reasons, such as walking a dog, traveling to and from work and catching a train or flight.

France has reported over 34,000 virus-related deaths, one of the highest tolls in Europe.