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A30 world news
Diabierna 15 Januari 2021

'At 6 p.m., life stops': Europe uses curfews to fight virus

virus variant that has swept before they must be home.
across neighboring Britain,
where new infections and vi- Women's rugby coach Fe-
rus deaths have soared. licie Guinot says negotiating
rush-hour traffic in Marseille
An earlier curfew combats has become a nightmare. The
virus transmission “precisely city in southern France is
because it serves to limit so- among the places where the
cial interactions that people more contagious virus vari-
can have at the end of the ant has started to flare.
day, for example in private
homes,” French government “It's a scramble so everyone
spokesman Gabriel Attal says. can be home by 6 p.m.,” Gui-
not said.
Curfews elsewhere in Eu-
rope all start later and often In historic Besançon, the
finish earlier. fortressed city that was the
hometown of “Les Mi-
The curfew in Italy runs sérables” author Victor
from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., as Hugo, music store owner
does the Friday night to Sun- Jean-Charles Valley says the
day morning curfew in Lat- 6 p.m. deadline means peo-
via. Regions of Belgium that ple no longer drop by after
speak French have a 10 p.m. work to play with the guitars
to 6 a.m. curfew while in Bel- and other instruments that
gium's Dutch-speaking re- he sells. Instead, they rush
gion, the hours are midnight home.
to 5 a.m.
(AP) — As the wan win- Starting Saturday, the rest of out the opportunity for early “People are completely de-
ter sun sets over France's France will follow suit. The evening drinks, nibbles and People out between 8 p.m. moralized,” Valley said.
Champagne region, the prime minister announced chats with friends, the so- and 5 a.m. in Hungary must
countdown clock kicks in. Thursday an extension of called “apero” get-togethers be able to show police writ- In Dijon, the French city
the 6 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew so beloved by the French that ten proof from their employ- known for its pungent mus-
Laborers stop pruning the to cover the whole country, were hurried but still feasi- ers that they are either work- tard, working mother of two
vines as the light fades at including zones where the ble when curfew started two ing or commuting. Celine Bourdin says her life
about 4:30 p.m., leaving them nightly deadline for getting hours later. There are no curfews in Bul- has narrowed to “dropping
90 minutes to come in from home hadn't started until 8 garia, Croatia, Denmark, Es- kids at school and going to
the cold, change out of their p.m. “With the 6 p.m. curfew, we tonia, Finland, Ireland, Lith- work, then going back home,
work clothes, hop in their cannot go to see friends for uania, Malta, Sweden, Poland helping kids with homework
cars and zoom home before French shops will have to a drink anymore,” Brunault or the Netherlands, although and preparing dinner.”
a 6 p.m. coronavirus curfew. close at 6 p.m. Outdoor ac- said. "I now spend my days the Dutch government is
tivities will stop, with the not talking to anyone except thinking about whether im- But even that cycle is bet-
Forget about any after-work exception of quick walks for for the baker and some peo- posing a curfew would slow ter than a repeat of France's
socializing with friends, af- pets. Workers will need em- ple by phone.” new COVID-19 cases. lockdown at the start of the
ter-school clubs for children ployers' notes to commute or pandemic, when schools also
or doing any evening shop- move around for work after By extending the 6 p.m. cur- In France, critics of the 6 closed, Bourdin says.
ping beyond quick trips for curfew. few nationwide, for at least p.m. curfew say the earlier
essentials. Police on patrol 15 days, the government time actually crams people “If my children don’t go to
demand valid reasons from Those who have lived with aims to limit infections in the together more after work, school, it means I cannot
people seen out and about. the longer curfew for the past country that has seen over when they pile onto public work anymore," she said. "It
For those without them, the couple of weeks say it's often 69,000 known virus deaths. It transportation, clog roads was terribly difficult to be all
threat of mounting fines for bad for business and for what also wants to slow the spread and shop for groceries in a stuck almost 24 hours a day
curfew-breakers is increas- remained of their anemic of a particularly contagious narrow rush-hour window in the house.”
ingly making life outside of social lives during the pan-
the weekends all work and demic.
no play.
Until a couple of weeks ago,
“At 6 p.m., life stops,” says the nightly curfew didn't kick
Champagne producer Alex- in until 8 p.m. in Prat's re-
andre Prat. gion, the Marne. Customers
still stopped to buy bottles of
Trying to fend off the need his family's bubbly wines on
for a third nationwide lock- their way home, he said. But
down that would further when the cut-off time was
dent Europe’s second-largest advanced to 6 p.m. to slow
economy and put more jobs viral infections, the drinkers
in danger, France is instead disappeared.
opting for creeping curfews.
Big chunks of eastern France, “Now we have no one," Prat
including most of its regions said.
that border Belgium, Germa-
ny, Switzerland and Italy, are The village where retiree Je-
living under 6 p.m.-to-6 a.m. rome Brunault lives alone in
restrictions on movement. At the Burgundy wine region is
12 hours, the curfew is the also in one of zones already
longest anywhere in the Eu- shutting down at 6 p.m. The
ropean Union’s 27 nations. 67-year-old says his solitude
weighs more heavily with-