Well, it’s down from 4611 yesterday to 2599 today.
They haven’t updated the charts yet but the figures are there.
As ever I hope that this is the start of a sustained reduction, or at least levelling off, of new cases but too early to tell.
Isn’t it the case that lockdown would take approx 2 weeks to start having an effect?
Depends what you mean by “have an effect”.
If lockdown measures are effective they will slow transmission immediately, but it takes an average 5½ days for people to show symptoms and typically another 7 days to be ill enough to need hospital - which is when they start showing up in the figures. So, yes, you need 2 weeks for it to start showing through. As I said fingers crossed that behind the scenes things are slowing down but at the moment France is still showing exponential growth.
I must admit plotting yesterdays figures makes the graph look much more hopeful 
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I thought so.
But as you say, we need this to turn into a steady trend. So far we’ve had too many blips.
Daily new cases in Italy static but no clear downward trend and still over 5k a day - better than exponential growth though.
If lockdowns are working it’s important to spread the word - otherwise people will, quite quickly I think, say “why bother?”.
Fortunately Macron has pre-empted this.
In countries where governments give advice not orders, and compliance is “voluntary” with no policing and no fines, that is indeed a great danger.
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Are the restrictions tough enough though?
Pail, please dont comment on one daily figure, you know that it’s the pattern that matters.
True
Of course the pattern only properly emerges with more data - you’re always left guessing from the most recent figures.
As I’m sure you understand it’s only when this is all over that any real analysis of the data can be made. The next thing that really matters will be to see if the lockdown within either France or the U.K. has had a real influence on the number of deaths linked to the Coronavirus.
That’s not going to start showing through for about three weeks (5-6 days typical incubation, on average 18 days from start of symptoms to death).
Even then without the ability to wind back time and play events with a different scenario we can only say what happened compared with what we thought would happen.
Depressing figures today 
Indeed - don’t lose heart though lockdowns appear to be working elsewhere and I see no reason that they should not be working in France - just, for some reason the numbers look a bit discouraging.
Is there another explanation - more testing oing on perhaps?
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Have they started including deaths in the community as well as in hospital?
Not yet but I’ve read that they will do shortly.
France is about 2 weeks after Italy. If France follows the same pattern, we would expect to see the number of positive tests continue to rise until mid April. With luck the numbers should then begin to decrease.
The latest chart from Italy suggests a rapid decrease, but it would be a mistake to be excessively optimistic o the basis of one day’s numbers. I expect a more gradual decrease over a number of weeks. Also, deaths occur 7 day or more after testing, so there will be continued exceptional demand on medical services for some time to come.