Marseille becomes France’s battleground in fight against Covid-19

Marseille may have been largely spared during the early months of the pandemic in spring, but this Mediterranean city has now become ground zero in France’s fight over how to manage the second wave of Covid-19. 

A backlash boiled over last week when restaurant and bar owners took to the streets in Marseille to protest against government mandates that they close for two weeks due to rising coronavirus rates in France’s second-largest city. Local politicians adopted an insurrectional tone by blasting the new orders on Twitter and in press conferences where they called the move unjust, threatened legal action to block it, and even hinted that police would not enforce it.  

Marseille is the only major city in mainland France facing such severe measures, and the lack of warning left many feeling singled out by distant elites in their rival city of Paris. Having barely survived the economic blow last spring, a sense of anger and despair weighed heavily on the mood of small business owners now fearing the economic fallout the shutdown could have on a city that already suffers one of France’s highest rates of poverty.

“We’re extremely anxious,” says Guillaume Sicard, president of the downtown business association Marseille Centre. Amid the fury at the protests, Sicard said he was struck by the sight of one restaurant owner weeping. “It’s not fair to punish everyone because some may not have followed the rules.”  

Marseille is accustomed to making headlines for all the wrong reasons. The sprawling coastal city is known as much for drugs, the mafia and political corruption as it is for its beaches, swinging nightlife, and bouillabaisse. While the city set among rolling hills shimmers when seen from a distance, the pollution-scarred buildings that line its winding narrow streets shelter a population where more than 25 per cent live below the poverty line.

The spring shutdown fell particularly hard, but the summer bought renewed hope. A stronger than expected summer tourism season included more hotel stays in the first half of August than in 2019. Unfortunately, it seems the tourists brought more than their wallets.  

Covid-19 cases began soaring over the summer, continuing to climb even as curfews were imposed on restaurants. The city is located in the department of Bouches-du-Rhônes where as of last Saturday there are 191.1 cases of Covid-19 for every 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest in France. 

But according to Ettore Recchi, a professor of sociology at Sciences Po (the Paris Institute of Political Studies), surveys have suggested that French citizens are more concerned about economic than health issues.

“I think the government is well aware of that and so it’s very reluctant to start a new lockdown. So it’s doing everything it can with partial measures to avoid it.”

For several weeks, medical officials in Marseille have been sounding the alarm and expressed growing frustration that local residents and politicians weren’t taking the new surge seriously. They restarted weekly pandemic committee meetings and reopened dedicated coronavirus wards that had been shut over the summer. Even so, they warned that hospitals were being saturated with patients, particularly in intensive care units.

Hôpital Européen, a semi-private facility in the city centre, has 20 Covid-19 beds in its intensive care unit – and already half are full. Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Marseille (AP-HM) runs 4 public hospitals which collectively have 216 Covid-19 beds with 177 occupied. That includes 44 patients in urgent care out of 90 beds.

As cases surge and Covid-19 unites expanded, staffing posed another problem. Marseille hospitals say they don’t have enough doctors and nurses. Back in the spring, hospitals across France halted all but the most urgent treatments, which freed up doctors and nurses to help in Covid-19 wards.  

With Marseille’s hospitals continuing most regular services, supplemental staff are scarce, with hospitals issuing an urgent call for medical staff hoping to plug the gap.  

Now that coronavirus cases are rising again across Europe, the response to the second wave in France is being closely watched as political leaders try to navigate this new phase of the pandemic.  

Over the last two weeks, more than half a million new cases were recorded.

To some extent, those numbers are being driven by more widespread testing. But transmission rates, hospitalisations, and deaths have all started to creep up as well.

That prompted the government last week to announce a new system that included a hierarchy of zones that trigger automatic rules for cities as their cases increase.

“Let’s be clear, the situation is continuing to deteriorate,” health minister Olivier Véran said at a nationally televised press conference. “If we don’t take steps quickly, we risk reaching critical thresholds in certain regions.”

Eleven cities, including Toulouse, Lyon, and Paris, fell into a “red” category that mandates curfews for bars and closing of many gyms. That prompted criticism from Paris’s mayor, while in Toulouse gym owners circulated a petition to fight the decision.  

But only Marseille and Guadeloupe fell in the “dark red” category, requiring the closing of bars and restaurants.

The outcry from Marseille’s politicians and business owners is the latest sign that the veneer of solidarity France mustered to successfully battle the coronavirus in the spring has started to fracture at both national and local levels.  

Laurent Lhardit, an assistant mayor for the economy and tourism, said the decision felt especially cruel because many establishments had just gotten back on their feet this summer. Many restaurant and bar owners worried they may not survive a two-week closure, he said, without some gesture of financial support. Throw in the other businesses that also will have to close, such as gyms, and he fears an economic ripple from which it will be hard for the city to bounce back.  

“I don’t think you can say that we are just motivated by the economy,” Lhardit said. “We are also motivated by the health of the public. But the reality is that many people and companies were already hurt by this crisis. To make an unexpected announcement like that, the government should have offered some financial support because this was already a city in danger.”