French President Emmanuel Macron addressed the public Wednesday via a YouTube livestream from the Élysée Palace in Paris.
What Happened: Macron outlined France’s objective for the next stage of the COVID-19 pandemic — to reduce daily infections from 40,000 to under 5,000 — and the steps it would take to reach it, including a new lockdown, economic continuity policies and the launch of a new app.
Why It Matters: Macron declared a new nationwide lockdown, effective from midnight Friday until Dec. 1 at minimum.
Yet he said that schools would remain open and that work would still be allowed — though working from home is preferable wherever possible.
France’s European borders will remain open, and the government will "massively deploy" a new contact tracing app called TousAntiCOVID, Macron said.
The app was developed by Orange S.A. ORAN along with a consortium of public and private partners.
What’s Next: The news is of great significance to Orange, as well as to the European economy as a whole.
It shows that France is attempting to balance responding decisively to the recent surge in COVID-19 cases with keeping its economy running.
Orange shares were trading down 2.32% Wednesday afternoon to $10.50 at the time of writing.
The iShares MSCI France ETF EWQ traded down 4.03% to $26.57, and the Vanguard FTSE Europe ETF VGK traded down 3.72% to $49.65.
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