The measures will begin on Saturday and last at least a month, Macron said in a televised national address.
Under the “limited lockdown” curfew will remain in force, domestic travel will be limited and people will be asked to work from home. Macron said nurseries and primary and secondary schools would remain closed for at least three weeks.
He said the new variant, first discovered in the United Kingdom, has caused an “epidemic within an epidemic” and is more contagious and deadly.
The President said that about 44% of all Covid patients in intensive care units are under the age of 65. He stressed that France had made the “right choices” so far, but added that the vaccine has “intensified” over the past few weeks. and “Things have changed.”
In his televised address, Macron said France would extend the regional “reinforced slow-motion” restrictions, already in place in 19 regions of the country across France. The new rules will be in effect for four weeks from Saturday.
“If we choose to extend them to the entire metropolitan area, it is because no metropolitan area is spared anymore,” he said.
“In these last weeks we are facing a new situation. We have entered the race for speed,” he said. “That’s why we must prepare ourselves a new framework for the coming months,” Macron said.
The French president said schools would gradually reopen at the end of April for kindergartens and primary schools and from May 3 for middle and high schools.
Macron, who is up for re-election next year, justified his regional strategy by saying the country needs to consider the impacts on mental health and the economy in preparing a balanced response to the third wave.
But as of Tuesday, more than 28,000 people were being treated in hospital for Covid-19 in France, including 5,072 in intensive care units (ICUs), according to figures from the French health ministry. This is the first time since April last year that the number of patients in the ICU has exceeded 5,000.
More than 40 ICU and emergency doctors in Paris published an op-ed in the Journal du Dimanche newspaper on Sunday, warning that ICU capacity in the region will reach capacity in the next two weeks if restrictions are not tightened.
There are over 1,500 patients in ICUs in the Paris region alone.
The doctors wrote that they had “not experienced such a situation even during the worst terrorist attacks in recent years,” and that there was “a clear mismatch between the needs and available resources”, which they described as a “disaster”. described. mentioned in.
Macron said last week that accelerating vaccination was a “national priority”, but he also acknowledged that European countries lack “ambition” around vaccine purchases.
Veterinarians and dentists have been allowed to administer Covid-19 vaccines from Friday to “speed up the campaign” in the country. More than 7.5 million people in France, about 11% of its population, have received at least one shot of the two-dose diet, government data shows.
CNN’s Martin Goilando and Lindsay Isaacs contributed to this report.
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