Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

France's National Assembly Votes for Extending Health Emergency


Sun 25 Oct 2020 | 10:50 AM
Yara Sameh

At least 71 National Assembly members of France, voted on Saturday, for extending the state of health emergency in France, while 35 others rejected the proposal, according to Russia Today (RT).

The French government on 16 October declared a public health state of emergency, giving officials greater powers to impose new measures to curb the spread of coronavirus.

A public health state of emergency was declared previously in March when hospitalizations were near their peak due to the ongoing pandemic.

The French government recently proposed to extend the state of health emergency until February, giving the state additional powers to contain the virus.

The proposal gives the government the right to limit, and even ban public movement, and impose further confinement in parts of the country, or the whole of it. Restrictions are also allowed more locally.

It is considered in two exceptional sittings of the Assemblée Nationale on October 24-25, and then it will be considered in the Senate.

If approved, the state of a health emergency would extend until February 16, 2021, with restrictions that could last until April 1.

The National Assembly would debate the proposal until Sunday evening before is presented to the Senate on Wednesday.

It would be adopted definitively in early November.

Coronavirus: France sees 'exponential rise' in cases - BBC News

France surpasses 1 million coronavirus cases

French health authorities on Friday revealed that the country reached 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 reported new figures, showing that tests had confirmed at least 1,041,075 coronavirus cases in France this year.

Experts say the real numbers of infections are probably much higher than the ones governments around the world are reporting due to a lack of tests early in the pandemic, asymptomatic cases, and other issues.

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