PARIS (Reuters) – France will not reopen museums, cinemas and theatres on Dec. 15 as planned because COVID-19 infection rates are not falling as fast as the government had hoped, Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Thursday.
France’s government had announced that a stay-at-home order imposed at the end of October to get to grips with a second wave of COVID-19 will be lifted by Dec. 15, and museums, theatres and cinemas would be allowed to re-open from that date.
But that was contingent, President Emmanuel Macron said, on the number of new cases of infection falling to around 5,000 a day.
Though transmission rates are several times lower than they were at the peak of the second wave, France is currently recording an average of 11,368 new cases each day, according to Reuters data.
(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
