Living with a Pandemic in the south of France

321 days since the start of the 1st confinement

▫️ News and titbits

▫️ Decision has been taken and put into action immediately. I have started a “Page” where the daily and weekly Coronavirus statistics will be maintained.

Two main advantages:

It will considerably reduce my data space requirement.
All you have to do is bookmark the link to the page to access the latest maintained data anytime.

I obviously will adapt content and new format which might take me a couple of days but this all part of the fun as far as I am concerned.

▫️ Admittedly the vaccinations are on target but it is also clear that the current target, mainly due to vaccine availability, is somewhat low. To achieve the target announced for this summer, the daily rate and availability of doses must increase sharply.

▫️ Some interesting statistics (Source INSEE)

▪︎On 1ᵉʳ January 2021, France has 67.4 million inhabitants. In the year 2020, the population grew by 0.3%. Half of this increase is due to the natural balance (+82,000 people), the difference between the number of births and deaths. It has fallen sharply due to the sharp rise in deaths linked to the Covid-19 pandemic.
▪︎In 2020, 740,000 babies were born in France. In decline since 2015, the fertility rate has been declining since then, reaching 1.84 children per woman in 2020. In 2018, France remains the most fertile country in the European Union.
▪︎In 2020, 658,000 people died in France, i.e. 7.3% more than in 2019. The Covid-19 pandemic particularly affected deaths in the spring and at the end of the year. Life expectancy at birth is 85.2 years for women and 79.2 years for men. It is significantly lower than in 2019 (-0.4 years for women and -0.5 years for men). The decline is much greater than in 2015, a year marked by a strong winter flu (-0.3 year and -0.2 year).
▪︎In 2020, 148,000 weddings were celebrated, down 34% compared to 2019, as the pandemic prevented the celebrations from taking place or prompted them to be postponed due to the limited number of guests.

▫️ New motorway tariffs on 1 February 2021.

Motorway toll rates increase from 0.30% to 0.65% on average from 1 February 2021. The average increase in these rates amounts to 0.44% for all companies operating on the motorway network. The price of certain journeys remains unchanged. For example, the Paris-Lyon journey (in a class 1 car) on the A6 remains at €35.70.

▫️ As advised 3 days ago, today is ” La Chandeleur” (Candlemas) which is mostly known in France as ” Le jour des Crêpes” (Pancake day).