“We calculate the traffic in real time to make sure we respect the limit on the number inside,” he told Reuters.
Many small business owners complained it was hard to operate under the new rules and said traffic was slow as clients were postponing their shopping until Black Friday, which has been delayed by a week to Dec. 4.
Paris deputy mayor Emmanuel Gregoire said on franceinfo radio that the mayor, Anne Hidalgo, would hold talks with retail organizations about allowing them to open on Sundays to catch up on lost sales.
“2020 will be a catastrophic year for everyone, but in order to limit the damage, December will be crucial,” he said.
The government has already allowed shops to open till 9 p.m. so they can receive more customers despite the surface limits.
At the Pasteur hospital in the Mediterranean town of Nice, whose intensive care unit is running double its normal bed capacity because of COVID-19, ICU head Carole Ichai said she hoped people would be responsible.
“I hope we will not regret this opening. Shopowners are making an effort, now everyone needs to take their civil responsibility serious,” she said. (Reporting by Geert De Clercq, Gilles Guillame and Yonathan Van der Voort in Paris and Eric Gaillard in Nice; Writing by Geert De Clercq Editing by Frances Kerry)
