Vox Sentences - Macron tells France to shut down

• After months spent ignoring calls from health officials to reimpose a nationwide lockdown in France, President Emanuel Macron finally did so on Wednesday. The move came amid slower-than-expected vaccination rates and the rise of a variant-fueled third wave of infections throughout Europe. [New York Times / Norimitsu Onishi and Constant Méheut]
• All schools in France will be closed for the next three weeks, and domestic travel will be banned for a month to curb accelerating Covid-19 rates. The government is also keeping in place a nationwide 7 pm curfew. [France 24]
• The decision to shut down schools was especially disappointing for Macron, who had exempted schools from the country’s most recent lockdown in November. The government had attempted to avoid a national shutdown by focusing on regional restrictions. But infection rates continued to increase.[Associated Press / Sylvie Corbet​]
• “We did everything we could to make these decisions as late as possible, when they became strictly necessary. That is now,” Macron said in a televised address Wednesday before announcing the new lockdown. [Bloomberg / Ania Nussbaum]
• Public support for the new restrictions has been on the rise in recent days in light of a French Hospital Federation warning last week that hospitals nationwide faced an “unprecedented violent shock” if cases weren’t curbed rapidly. [BBC]
• Over 5,000 patients are in critical care in France, which has seen its daily Covid-19 infections double since February. And while the UK recorded just 4,000 daily cases this week, France saw a high of 59,000. [Reuters / Sudip Kar-Gupta and Geert De Clercq]
• The next presidential election is a year away, and many suspect Macron had been resistant to lockdown efforts to stave off the momentum of far-right opponent Marine Le Pen. Given growing support for a national lockdown, it’s unclear whether Macron’s efforts will help or hurt him in 2022.  [The Guardian / Philippe Marliere]

[Vox / Ella Nilsen, Alex Ward, and Li Zhou]

• Major League Baseball kicked off its 2021 season Thursday. The New York Mets and Washington Nationals did not play: Their respective season start times were pushed back due to Covid-19 concerns within Nationals’ clubhouse. [Chicago Tribune / Howard Fendrich]
• Virginia became the first southern state to pass a voting rights act since the Supreme Court repealed the national Voting Rights Act in 2013. The new law requires all election-related changes be approved by the state’s attorney general, and racial discrimination in legislating voting is expressly prohibited. [New York Times / Reid J. Epstein and Nick Corasaniti]
• Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte today survived a vote of no confidence in the Dutch Parliament. Rutte stood accused of lying and freezing political opponents out of Parliament while attempting to form a new coalition government. He is now on track to become the Netherlands’ longest-serving PM. [BBC].
• As vaccination rates in America have quickened, they’ve grown “unacceptably slow” in the European Union, according to Dr. Hans Kluge, WHO’s European director. Just 4 percent of people across the continent are fully vaccinated. [VOA News]