Hospitals in the Paris and Marseille regions are delaying some scheduled operations to free up space for COVID-19 patients as the French government tries to stem a rising tide of coronavirus infections, the health minister said Sunday. As restaurants and bars in Marseille prepared to shut down Sunday night for a week as part of scattered new French virus restrictions, Health Minister Olivier Veran insisted that the country plans no new lockdowns. Two Nobel Prize-winning economists proposed in Le Monde newspaper this weekend that France lock down its population for the first three weeks of December, to allow families to get together safely for the end-of-year holidays and “save Christmas.” In response, Veran said on LCI television that “we do not want to confine the country again. Several countries around us made other choices. We don’t want this.” He urged the French to make an effort […]