The French prime minister’s office denied that a coronavirus-related curfew was being reinstated in Paris, after government spokesman Gabriel Attal announced the measure earlier on Tuesday morning.

Attal stated on BFM TV that the government “will restore a curfew in Paris and maybe in the Ile-de-France [wider Paris] region.” Asked what time the curfew would begin, he responded “9 p.m., I think,” adding that the interior minister would give details later in the day.  

But a curfew is “absolutely not decided at this stage,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement less than an hour later.

In conjunction with the Paris police prefecture and the municipality of Paris, “a decision will be made in the next few days.” According to the statement, the measure would consist of imposing a time at which businesses authorized to open during lockdown would have to close, “in light of certain situations observed in Paris at evening times.”

Attal cited parties in a Paris courtyard and in a bar in nearby Évry-Courcouronnes as examples of such situations, also pointing to the 14,000 people who have been fined for breaking lockdown without justification, out of over 100,000 controls carried out since Friday.

Later Tuesday morning, Health Minister Olivier Véran explained that the Paris prefect had approached the government to discuss measures to prevent large gatherings, which Véran said “could be correlated to a certain number of [open] businesses in the evening.”

France had imposed a 9 p.m. curfew on October 17 in Paris, the Île-de-France region, and eight other metropolitan areas. The curfew was later extended to further areas, before being replaced by a national lockdown which started October 30.

This was the latest in a series of confusions over the restrictions this week, including over what products and stores should be deemed “essential” during lockdown, and which officials should be announcing those decisions.