Coronavirus: More than one million people fled Paris area as lockdown began, phone data suggests

Population dropped by nearly 20 per cent, research finds

More than one million people reportedly fled the Paris area in the days around France‘s nationwide lockdown over its coronavirus outbreak.

Phone company Orange said it analysed location data and charted the mass exodus from the capital as the country prepared to restrict movement to tackle the virus.

The number of people in Greater Paris fell by nearly 1.2 million between 13 and 20 March, the week the lockdown started, according to newspaper Le Monde.

Stéphane Richard, the CEO of Orange, told French radio their research found the area's population had dropped by nearly 20 per cent.

The information – which was gathered by tracing people’s movements using geolocation data from their phones – was combed together and made anonymous, Mr Richard said.

“It is absolutely impossible to trace or identify anyone from this data,” an Orange spokesperson told The Independent, adding the information is shared with Inserm, a French health research body.

Parisians rushed to flee the capital before the nationwide lockdown began on 17 March.

People in France have been ordered to stay at home unless it is to buy food, medicine or go to work if they cannot work from home as authorities tackle the spread of the virus.

The CEO of Orange said the anonymised data not only shows how many people left Paris during the pandemic, but also rising numbers of people elsewhere - important information for health authorities to have.

It found Ile-de-Re, an island off France’s west coast, saw its population surge by around 30 per cent in days around the lockdown.

Mari-Noëlle Jégo-L, the deputy CEO of Orange, said the research “allows us to map and predict the spread of the epidemic, and therefore to work out what we need from our health care systems.”

In eastern France, around Strasbourg and Mulhouse – home to the country’s second biggest outbreak after the Paris region – intensive care units are already overwhelmed.

The army has been called in to set up a field hospital, and have been transferring patients across the country to areas with more available hospital beds by military helicopter.

The fourth evacuation of this sort will take place on Friday, flying people from eastern France to Bordeaux, according to local media reports.

Nearly 30,000 people have been infected with Covid-19 – a flu-like virus that can turn into pneumonia – in the country to date.

Meanwhile, the official death toll stood at around 1,700 on Friday.

Additional reporting by agencies