Prime Minister Edouard Philippe will tell us on Tuesday how we are to be deconfined. We already have a fair idea, since the proposals of the government’s scientific advisers have been made public and, of course, we all now listen to the experts – as long as we’re not Donald Trump.

Except apparently the government didn’t accept their advice on reopening schools. The committee at first proposed keeping them closed until September but in a second opinion accepted the “political decision of a prudent and gradual reopening”, while suggesting that it should be voluntary and that learning at distance should be maintained where necessary.

It is not clear whether the government is most concerned about children’s education returning to normality or their parents being able to return to their workplaces. Maybe both, eh?

So far as those workplaces are concerned, the scientists want working from home to continue wherever it is feasible – that’s going to become more common anyway, now we’ve discovered how practical it can be, isn’t it? – and office hours to be staggered to reduce crowding on public transport, where we will all probably have to wear masks, social distancing being judged unviable by the Paris transport network.

The word “discrimination” having been uttered, there will be no compulsory extension of lockdown for the over-65s but, given the extra risk for older people, the experts advise them to observe a “strict and voluntary” stay-at-home policy.

Most shops and businesses will reopen on 11 May but not bars and restaurants or museums and other places where large numbers of people may gather, a category that seems to include parks and gardens.

Preparing the end of lockdown seems to have been a fractious business, so far as the government is concerned.

Macron having announced that all would be ready on 11 May, he did not take kindly to some of his ministers prevaricating, according to the Journal du Dimanche.

There has even been tension between Macron and Philippe, which is “unprecedented” according to the paper.

The president himself seems to have dropped the idea of regional variations and the country’s mayors, who are important local powerbrokers, have told him that it is up to the government to draw up the rules, which they promise to implement.

A sad note on a Champigny Facebook page: A woman whose father recently died reports that the family home has been burgled. A bag containing his harmonicas, “the only thing I had to remember him by”, was stolen.

Given that they do not have much monetary value, she hopes that the burglars may have dumped them and that someone might find them and return them to her.

“The thieves, if you see this message and you still have a bit of humanity, please put them back in the letter box so that I can do my grieving,” she concludes.

France’s Covid-19 death toll officially stands at 22,614, 369 in the past 24 hours. 28,222 people are in hospital, a fall of 436 in 24 hours, with 4,725 in intensive care, down 145. 44,594 people have been discharged from hospital, 1,101 of them yesterday.

How do we get out of lockdown? The president has set a date, 11 May, but the plan is a bit short on details at the moment.

There are signs of tension, reports of vandalism and some clashes with police in parts of the banlieue, where some large families live in cramped conditions and many young people have strained relations with the forces of law and order.

Last night shots from home-made mortars were fired at the police station in Champigny, which is situated on a housing estate in the Bois l’Abbé neighbourhood. There were two incidents, one just before 1.00am, the other at 3.30am, according to reports.

A CRS riot police officer was slightly injured and a police vehicle damaged.

The attackers fled the scene and have not been caught.

Videos have been posted online, including one apparently filmed by the attackers.

Raphaël, the council employee who phones to check on Mum every day, says that isolation is taking its psychological toll on some of the elderly people he talks to. One old lady was desperately sad not to have been able to hold her great grand-daughter, who has been born while lockdown has been in place.

The latest news is that lockdown exit is likely to be applied differently in different parts of the country – so there should be relatively tough restrictions in the Paris region for some time yet.

The president is considering a déconfinement that varies according to how local authorities judge the situation in their area, sources have told Le Monde, which comments that “Emmanuel Macron is not as Jacobin as people think”, according to his supporters.

In hypercentralised France it really is quite daring to leave such initiatives to the regions. But it makes sense, given the disparate effect of the epidemic.

Along the Atlantic coast the rate of hospitalisation it between 0.9 and 1.9 per 1,000, with rural areas less affected than those where the cities of Rennes and Bordeaux are situated.

Val-de-Marne, where I live, seems to have the highest rate in the country, at 14.9 per 1,000, although Paris has a higher per capita death rate – 6.0 per 1,000, compared to 5.8 per 1,000 here.

Although the proportion of their population in hospital is lower, the death toll in Haut Rhin and Territoire de Belfort, in the east, is even grimmer, 8.5 and 10.0 respectively.

Paris has the highest total of deaths – 1,288, compared to 817 in Val-de-Marne, 646 in Haut Rhin and 140 in Territoire de Belfort.

Whichever way you look at it, the Paris region, with its tightly packed population and high infection rate, is going to have to enforce more precautions than the rest of the country.

Those will probably include enforcing wearing masks on public transport. The worldwide controversy over their value continues, however, with the WHO repeating its assertion that they are not useful to people who are not infected while the French Académie de Médécine has called for them to be made obligatory in all public spaces as from now.

In any case, it will be back to business as almost usual on 11 May. Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire wants all shops to reopen, but not bars and restaurants. On the other hand, there might be regional disparities, he says.

National health boss Jérôme Salomon says that social distancing and other precautions will be with us “for a long time”.

Some 61,700 lives have been saved by France’s lockdown, according to a study published yesterday. The health service, especially in Ile de France and the Grand Est, would have been swamped, with 100,000 intensive care beds needed, it estimates.

The report in Le Monde prompted one grumpy early-riser to denounce the publication as “propaganda and disinformation”. Not being under lockdown is “not a synonym for an orgy or a Covid party”, the commenter said, pointing out that the death toll was not nearly that high in countries that have not instituted lockdown.

But there are other variables, notably the extent of testing in Asian countries that were better prepared than Europe. And, as Le Monde points out, the recent rise in the death toll in New York, which was slow to enforce lockdown, and in Sweden, where it has not been implemented, show that the measure “has saved numerous lives”.

France’s Covid-19 death toll now officially stands at 21,344, 544 in the past 24 hours. 29,741 people are in hospital, down 365, 5,218 in intensive care, down 215. 40,657 people have been discharged from hospital.