Laurent Touvet, the prefect of the Department Moselle, said on Saturday that schools will remain open, despite the significant uptick in cases in the region. Current restrictions are deemed “sufficient”.
Touvet reiterated that some elected officials were wrong to claim that the area was heading for school closures.
The department has seen a higher infection rate than the national average over the past few weeks, partially due to the spread of the more contagious variant first discovered in South Africa.
On Friday, France’s health minister Olivier Véran said that each new case in the Moselle is treated as a case of that variant until proven otherwise. This means that new infections will be subject to immediate contact tracing and a self-isolation period of 10 days, instead of 7.
