Fatigue Outpaces Progress as France Enters Yet Another Lockdown

PARIS — At the Montparnasse train station in Paris, the contrast couldn’t have been sharper.

About a year ago, faced with the first national lockdown against a raging coronavirus epidemic, Parisians desperately jammed into trains in an exodus that turned Montparnasse into a place of fear and anxiety, and the capital into a ghost town.

But on Friday morning, a day before the start of the third national lockdown, foot traffic was relatively light inside Montparnasse station and others in Paris. The mood was one of deep fatigue ahead of restrictions that, once again, will severely limit travel across France, confine people’s movements in their communities and shut down schools.

“There is a bit of weariness,” said Muriel Sallandre, who was catching a train to visit her parents in western France but was planning to return to Paris in a few days. “The absence of perspective, being dependent on the government’s messages — all that is ultimately a little depressing.”

Many French rushed to buy train tickets immediately after the announcement of a new lockdown on Wednesday evening. So the capital’s stations will likely get more crowded over the weekend, as travelers planning to spend the latest lockdown outside Paris mix with those traveling to visit relatives for Easter. Some Parisians also left the capital after restrictions were imposed in the capital region a couple of weeks ago.

painfully slow.

announced yet another national lockdown after months of resisting advice from epidemiologists and pressure from political rivals. Mr. Macron had bet unsuccessfully that, despite rising infections and new powerful variants, a national lockdown could be avoided if enough people got vaccinated at a steady pace.

AstraZeneca, which ran into production shortages and said its contracts required it to fulfill orders to Britain first.

Its vaccine, which France and other European countries bet heavily on to lead them out of the pandemic, has also been plagued by worries about rare but sometimes fatal side effects that led them briefly to suspend its use. Some nations are still not giving it out or are restricting who gets it.

Among the French, the mood has grown darker as other nations, especially Britain and the United States, have bounced back from a disastrous handling of the epidemic with successful inoculation campaigns. Just 13 percent of France’s population has had at least one vaccine shot, compared to 47 percent of Britons and 30 percent of Americans.