French authorities extended quarantine until December 1

French Prime Minister Jean Castex announced on Thursday the extension of the country's lockdown for "at least another two weeks." He announced this at a press conference.

Before the prime minister's speech, the authorities did not rule out the option of extending the quarantine until the new year. December 1 is the date that the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron initially called as the minimum desired.

Castex said that 10,500 people have died from the coronavirus in the country over the past month, the total number of victims of the pandemic has exceeded 42,500. With intensive testing, France ranks fifth in the world in the number of detected cases of coronavirus.

“The second wave is extremely powerful,” the prime minister said. 40% of people in intensive care are under 65 years old. The country's R index (i.e., an indicator of the number of people that, on average, one patient infects) has now decreased and is approximately 0.8-0.9.

If the situation with the coronavirus worsens in the next two weeks, the French authorities will have to take new restrictive measures, Castex said.

The second quarantine was introduced in France on November 1. Before that, from mid-October, the French authorities introduced a curfew in most of the country.