Lunchtime News Monday 26th October 2020

Nice International airport sets up trail testing for Covid-19 - Nice International airport has from today Monday 26th October  set up, on an experimental basis, the use of rapid antigenic tests for Covid-19 for certain destinations including Italy and the United States.

The platform hopes to restore confidence in air travel and reopen borders. The aim is to unify the test procedure at all European airports, even worldwide, in hope to see the traffic take off again. For the moment, only the airports of Frankfurt, London and one Italian airport offer antigenic tests.

Second wave of Covid-19 - The head of Paris public hospitals has warned that France's second wave of coronavirus infections could be worse than the first. Speaking to French media he said that "There has been a perception in recent months that a second wave does not exist, or that it is a small wave. The situation is the opposite”. He added that "It is possible that the second wave will be worse than the first," warning of a "daunting" challenge ahead.

Cancer care in France – Meanwhile France’s League against cancer fears a further delay in the care of patients and estimates that "there are around 30,000 undetected cancers".

Doctors are warning again on the need not to stop the access of cancer patients to care, already offset by lockdown.

Delay in diagnosis, deferred care or treatment being postponed. Patients with cancer already suffered an upheaval in their care protocol during the first wave of Covid-19 and are now faced with the second wave.

The French government decided on Thursday to extend the curfew to 54 departments to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The intensive care units are approaching saturation in some hospitals and the lack of beds and staff is increasingly felt.

Boycott of French products - France has urged Arab countries to stop calls for boycotts of French products, while President Emmanuel Macron vowed the country would never give in to Islamic radicals.

The French foreign affairs ministry said in a statement released on Sunday that in recent days there had been calls to boycott French products, notably food products, in several Middle Eastern countries

On Sunday, Macron said in a tweet: "We will not give in, ever" to Islamic radicals.

“Cycling4planet” - A 22-year-old French student, Antoine Abou, has set off on a 7,000 km cycling trip to showcase the best environmental initiatives around Europe. The goal is to prove that there are as many solutions to the climate crisis as problems.

Antoine created his campaign 'Cycling4Planet' over the summer. After having secured some financial backing and borrowed an electric bike, he left the French town of Lyon at the end of September. He set a target to cycle for a total of nine months, while doing as many interviews as he can on environmental discoveries along the way.

Motorist stopped for nonexistent date on insurance disc - A driver has been caught after police discovered that his insurance disc was valid until February 31st 2021, a date which doesn’t exist.  The motorist was stopped by police in the Drôme during a routine road check in the Valence area.

And Finally 

Even though it's only an hour, many of us find that the clocks changing really impacts our sleep.

Thankfully, the weekend's change is the good one - meaning we got an extra hour .

But for some it plays havoc with their sleep routine. In a bid to tackle this, researchers say its easy to work out exactly what time you need to go to bed depending on what time you need to wake up the next morning.

As we  sleep in 90-minute cycles, and we should aim to get either five or six of these cycles every night.