France has not ruled out imposing a third nationwide lockdown if coronavirus case numbers continue to rise, its health minister said as the country braced for a possible post-Christmas surge.
"We will never exclude measures that are necessary to protect the public," Olivier Veran told the Journal du Dimanche.
"That is not to say we have made a decision but that we are watching the situation hour by hour."
France has been registering about 15,000 new infections a day, and on Friday confirmed the first case of a new coronavirus variant that recently emerged in Britain.
The strain, which experts fear is more contagious, prompted more than 50 countries to impose travel restrictions on the UK.
After a snap 48-hour ban on UK arrivals this week, France has reopened its borders, partly to allow its citizens to return home but also to relieve the massive build-up of freight goods.
On Saturday it took delivery of the first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine that it will use in its mass inoculation campaign.
