Officials in March have reacted sharply to the French government’s decision to order the closure of all bars and restaurants in the city since this weekend, with officials calling the decision a “collective punishment.”

Health Minister Olivier Varane said the Mediterranean city had been designated a “high alert” area because of the alarming rise in Kovid-19 infections, which threatened to call local hospitals.

The closure order also includes nearby Ice-en-Provence and Guadeloupe in the Caribbean.

Local officials claimed the decision was made without consultation and that it was a “disaster”.

City Mayor Michelle Rubirola tweeted: “I am surprised and angry to learn of a decision Marseille has made. Town Hall Suggestions not taken. Nothing about the health situation justifies this announcement. I can’t accept that no one understands that the people of Marseille become victims of political decisions. ”

Marseille City Hall is effective from Saturday – the closure order has been demanded to be delayed for 10 days.

Renad Museiel, president of Provence-Alpes-C -te-d’Azur, described the move as a “semi-lockdown” and said “this collective punishment is extremely severe in our region’s economy.”

Martin Vassal, president of the Ice-Marseille-Province metropolitan authority, said the decision was a “real economic disaster”.

Bernard Marty, president of the Hotel Industry Union, called an emergency meeting of members shortly after the minister’s announcement.

“No one warned us,” he said. “I have no confidence in this government. Does it make sense that it’s not just restaurants, it’s food producers, suppliers … a whole chain of it is in the process of being killed. All I can say is that we will not go down without a fight. ”

Paris officials also reacted angrily to Voran’s announcement that the capital’s Bordeaux, Lyon, Nice, Lille, Toulouse, Saint-Etienne, Renaissance, Rh ,ne, Grenoble and all Montpellier “vigil alert” zones – must be reached by 10pm, the minister said. An increase can be ordered before it is increased.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who allowed the city’s bars and restaurants to set up terraces on sidewalks and parking lots, said the new rules were “extremely cumbersome” and “taken without advice”.

“I have expressed my views with these steps,” Hidalgo said.

In fact, the closure order described by Baran could affect very few companies in Paris because most bars also serve snacks and meals.

However, the minister said details are still being decided with local administrators, known as prefect.

Varan said the government has made every effort to avoid a general lockdown after two months of national austerity Imprisonment Between March and May and said that necessary measures were taken to “break the discipline of the virus” and reduce its spread.

Infection rates of about 50 per 100,000 people and areas are marked as “higher alert” where more than 150 infections per 100,000 people and moderate stress on hospitals, and “high alert” are classified as 250 per 100,000 inhabitants. More and more than 30% of beds are used by Kovid-19 patients in the intensive care unit of the hospital. The final area is the “emergency”, where more regulations will be imposed; No part of France is in this final region.

The minister warned that four cities were at risk of going on “higher alert” if the situation did not improve: Tours, Strasbourg, Dijon and Clermont-Ferrand.

The surname and restrictions of the new zone will remain in effect for two weeks.

On Wednesday evening, the French public health authority, Santa Public France, recorded 13,072 new Covid-19 infections, a record since the outbreak began; Some of this rise has led to free testing – France now runs 1 million tests a week – but the rate of positive results has risen from 5.1% to 6.2% in one week. The number of admissions to hospitals and intensive care units has also increased. A total of 31,459 people have now died in France blamed for the coronavirus.