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As the winter sun sets over France's Champagne region, the countdown clock kicks in.

Labourers stop pruning the vines as the light fades at about 4.30pm, leaving them 90 minutes to come in from the cold, change out of their work clothes, hop in their cars and zoom home before a 6pm coronavirus curfew.

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Forget about any after-work socialising with friends, after-school clubs for children or doing any evening shopping beyond quick trips for essentials.

Police on patrol demand valid reasons from people seen out and about.

For those without them, the threat of mounting fines for curfew-breakers is increasingly making life outside of the weekends all work and no play.

"At 6pm, life stops," Champagne producer Alexandre Prat said.

Trying to fend off the need for a third nationwide lockdown that would further dent Europe's second-largest economy and put more jobs in danger, France is instead opting for creeping curfews.

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Big chunks of eastern France, including most of its regions that border Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, face 6pm to 6am restrictions on movement.

The rest of France could quickly follow suit, losing two extra hours of liberty that have been just enough for residents to maintain bare-bones social lives.

Until a couple of weeks ago, the nightly curfew didn't kick in until 8pm in Prat's region, the Marne.

Customers still stopped to buy bottles of his family's bubbly wines on their way home, he said. But when the cut-off time was advanced to 6pm to slow viral infections, the drinkers disappeared.

"Now we have no one," Mr Prat said.

The village where retiree Jerome Brunault lives alone in the Burgundy wine region is also in one of the 6pm curfew zones.

The 67-year-old says his solitude weighs more heavily without the opportunity for early evening drinks, nibbles and chats with friends, the so-called "apero" get-togethers so beloved by the French that were hurried but still feasible when curfew started two hours later.

"With the 6pm curfew, we cannot go to see friends for a drink anymore," Mr Brunault said.

"I now spend my days not talking to anyone except for the baker and some people by phone."

Imposing a 6pm curfew nationwide is among options the French government is considering in response to rising infections and the spread of a particularly contagious virus variant that has swept across Britain, where new infections and virus deaths have soared.

Prime Minister Jean Castex could announce a curfew extension on Thursday evening, as well as other restrictions, to fight the virus in a country that has seen over 69,000 confirmed virus deaths.

An earlier curfew combats virus transmission "precisely because it serves to limit social interactions that people can have at the end of the day, for example in private homes," French government spokesman Gabriel Attal said.

In France, critics of the 6pm curfew say the earlier time actually crams people together more after work, when they pile onto public transportation, clog roads and shop for groceries in a narrow rush-hour window before they must be home.

Women's rugby coach Felicie Guinot says negotiating rush-hour traffic in Marseille has become a nightmare.

The city in southern France is among the places where the more contagious virus variant has started to flare.

"It's a scramble so everyone can be home by 6pm," Ms Guinot said.

In historic Besançon, the fortressed city that was the hometown of "Les Misérables" author Victor Hugo, music store owner Jean-Charles Valley says the 6pm deadline means people no longer drop by after work to play with the guitars and other instruments that he sells.

Instead, they rush home.

"People are completely demoralised," Mr Valley said.

In Dijon, the French city known for its pungent mustard, working mother of two Celine Bourdin says her life has narrowed to "dropping kids at school and going to work, then going back home, helping kids with homework and preparing dinner."

But even that cycle is better than a repeat of France's lockdown at the start of the pandemic, when schools also closed, Ms Bourdin says.

"If my children don't go to school, it means I cannot work anymore," she said.

"It was terribly difficult to be all stuck almost 24 hours a day in the house."

COVID-19 curfews in the rest of Europe

Overnight curfews have become the norm in swaths of Europe but the 6pm to 6am curfew in 25 regions of eastern France is the most restrictive anywhere in the European Union's 27 nations.

Others countries' curfews all start later and often finish earlier.

The curfew in Italy runs from 10pm to 5am, as does the Friday night to Sunday morning curfew in Latvia.

Regions of Belgium that speak French have a 10pm to 6am curfew while in Belgium's Dutch-speaking region, the hours are midnight to 5am.

People out between 8pm and 5am in Hungary must be able to show police written proof from their employers that they are either working or commuting.

There are no curfews in Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Malta, Sweden, Poland or the Netherlands, although the Dutch government is thinking about whether imposing a curfew would slow new COVID-19 cases.

UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has announced a travel ban for in-bound arrivals from South America and Portugal.

The restrictions are being brought in from tomorrow as fears grow over a coronavirus variant first discovered in Brazil.

The ban applies to people who have travelled from, or through, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Cape Verde, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela in the last 10 days.

"Travel from Portugal to the UK will also be suspended given its strong travel links with Brazil – acting as another way to reduce the risk of importing infections," Shapps said in the announcement on Twitter.

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There will be some exemptions, including hauliers travelling from Portugal to allow the transport of essential goods.

Also, British and Irish citizens as well as foreign nationals with residence rights are still able to travel from these countries but must self-isolate for 10 days, along with their households he said.

Travel bans are already in place for UK-bound passengers from South Africa and Denmark, after new variants of the virus were detected in these countries.

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Further strict travel restrictions will come into place from Monday, with all travellers required to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken no more than 3 days before boarding their flight.

It comes after a week of record figures in the UK.

On Wednesday, the country recorded it's highest number of daily deaths since the start of the pandemic with 1,564 people dying within 28 days of a positive COVID-19 test and another 47,525 daily confirmed coronavirus cases.

While provisional NHS data shows 2,661,850 COVID-19 vaccinations were administered in England between December 8 and January 12.