France: France entered a new lockdown on Friday midnight as the resurgent Covid-19 pandemic. France’s 65 million people were largely confined to their homes, needing written statements to leave, in the latest drastic measure to curb a disease that has infected more than 44.5 million people worldwide and killed nearly 1.2 million.

The Covid-19 pandemic increasingly forced other countries to consider following suit, with Europe passing 10 million total infections and the United States posting a daily record of 90,000 cases.  Just days before the US presidential election, the country recorded 91,295 new cases in 24 hours, surging past the 90,000-mark for the first time to a total of almost nine million.

President Donald Trump has continued to downplay the dangers of the virus, telling a cheering crowd at a Tampa rally that lockdowns under his Democrat rival Joe Biden would banish normal life. “We’re never going to lock down again,” Trump said ahead of the November 3 vote, telling supporters his own recent bout with Covid-19 — for which he was hospitalized — proved it can be beaten “I’m not going to shut down the economy, I’m not going to shut down the country. I’m going to shut down the virus.” Biden responded in Tampa.

Italy posted its own daily infection record on Friday, fuelling debate about whether it should follow France into a national lockdown. In the French capital Paris, some medics voiced fears that steady traffic and appreciable numbers of people on public transport showed the public was not taking the lockdown as seriously a second time round. The director of Paris hospitals Martin Hirsch in a tweet said that,

“Crossing Paris this morning looked more like an ordinary day than the first day of a lockdown.” “We don’t have the choice, we are obliged to live, do our shopping and behave as if it is normal even if there are some safety measures,” said Fabrice Angelique, 18, buying headphones at a books and electronics store in Paris.

President Emmanuel Macron has warned that the second wave “will probably be more difficult and deadly than the first” in a country that has already seen 36,000 deaths.