Emmanuel Macron has been praised for confessing that France was “insufficiently prepared” for the coronavirus outbreak but serious doubts dwell over the feasibility of his pledge to start lifting lockdown in a month’s time.

Breaking ranks with other world leaders who have stonewalled suggestions they were caught short over the crisis, Mr Macron dropped warlike rhetoric for an uncharacteristic mea culpa on Monday night in a televised address watched by almost 37 million people – an all-time broadcast record.

“Mistakes were made. Were we prepared for this crisis? On the face of it, not enough,” he said. “But we coped.”

“This moment, let’s be honest, has revealed cracks, shortages. Like every country in the world, we have lacked gloves, hand gel, we haven’t been able to give out as many masks as we wanted to our health professionals,” he admitted.

Pride in France’s widely lauded public health system took a huge knock when French doctors issued plaintive pleas for critical drugs, face masks and ventilators while neighbouring Germany has appeared to breeze through the pandemic. The medical establishment has further frayed public nerves by engaging in very public rows on potential treatments.

While Mr Macron’s popularity initially shot up after he followed Italy and Spain in imposing drastic confinement, public disapproval grew amid accusations the government had failed to come clean over the shortages.

Health workers in France have accused him for months of failing to respond to their demands for more equipment, better working conditions and better pay. French nurses, for example, are among the worst-paid of all OCDE countries.

Last week, it transpired that the Elysée had cut a video in which the president was taken to task by medical workers while visiting a hospital in Paris. The official video showed medics applauding with Mr Macron.

However, Isabelle Bernard, a nurse and CGT unionist at the Kremlin-Bicetre hospital, told Le Parisien it failed to show him being berated by a nurse who told him that they had been “on strike for months and that he had never responded” and that “it was a pity that it took thousands of deaths for him to be concerned about healthcare”.

The president’s frank televised avowal over the shortcomings appeared to turn the tide, with almost two thirds of the French saying they were “convinced” by his speech even if a majority remained doubtful over how he would lift confinement.

“When will we be able to return to a normal life?” Mr Macron asked the nation four weeks into lockdown. “I would love to be able to answer you. But to be frank, I have to humbly tell you we don’t have definitive answers,” he said.

Schools and shops would progressively reopen on May 11, Mr Macron said. But restaurants, hotels, cafes and cinemas would have to remain shut longer, he added. International arrivals from non-European countries would remain prohibited until further notice.

Anyone presenting Covid-19 symptoms would be tested after this date and all members of the public would be given nonprofessional face masks.

With 15,000 lives lost to the virus, France, like Italy and Spain, has started to see the number of patients in intensive care units decline amid hopes the epidemic has reached a plateau, although nursing homes still remain hard-hit.

“We’ll have better days, and we’ll return to happy days,” Mr Macron promised.

“It’s not every day you hear a president offer a mea culpa and dare say ‘we have no definitive answers.’ Reassuring and necessary sincerity,” said analyst Maxime Sbaihi of the think tank GenerationLibre.

The Republicans, France’s opposition Right-wing party, welcomed the centrist president’s “humility”, with parliamentary leader Damien Abad, noting: “The martial tone has been dropped for a more humble one. At last, he has assumed responsibility and acknowledged a certain number of mistakes.”

“We welcome the objective he has clearly fixed. He has given the French a horizon for the end of confinement which was indispensable.”

However, the Right and other parties questioned the method for ending lockdown, calling for mass testing on a par with Germany. “There are asymptomatic people who carry the virus,” they warned.

“Every day, private businesses offer to make masks. Several initiatives have not been taken up,” complained Jordan Bardella of the far-Right National Rally, blaming “hellish bureaucratic red tape”.

Socialist Olivier Faure said: “There are too many unknowns and the government must very quickly provide evidence to help understand how this can be done in time.”

Teachers unions entered the fray, with Francette Popineau of the Snuipp-FSU, saying: “It’s anything but serious to re-open schools on May 11 because they tell us that public places should remain shut – cinemas, theatres – but not schools when everyone knows that these are a breeding ground for contagion.”

“It appears in total contradiction with the rest.”

A poll out today suggested that a majority of French, some 54 per cent, were also against Mr Macron’s plan to start re-opening schools on May 11.

The reasoning that keeping classes closed was worsening inequality “doesn’t wash compared to the health issue”, said Céline Bracq of the pollster, Odoxa.

Edouard Philippe, the French prime minister, sought to assuage such fears by promising a “full exit plan well before May 11”. The plan, he said, would “put in place instruments, methods, a working doctrine, the necessary coordination” for lifting lockdown.

France’s employers’ federation, Medef, meanwhile hailed the prospect of a return to work and the extension of support for stricken companies and workers temporarily laid off during lockdown.

However, top hospitality union, Umif, warned that restaurants, cafes and hotels were heading for “economic catastrophe” amid uncertainty over when they can re-open.

France’s economy is now expected to contract eight per cent this year, two per cent worse than the figure flagged last week. The extension will blow the public sector budget deficit out to a post-war record of nine per cent of GDP, up from 7.6 per cent last week, budget minister Gerald Darmanin told France Info.

That prompted Medef to warn that the French will have to “work harder” once confinement was lifted, prompting union complaints of “indecency”.

The unions cried victory on Tuesday over a court ruling that Amazon France had “failed to recognise its obligations regarding the security and health of its workers”.

In what appears to be a world first, the court in Nanterre, outside Paris, ordered Amazon to limit operations to delivering only “food, hygiene and medical products” while it ascertains workers’ risk of coronavirus exposure.

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