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France’s public health agency said a total of 30,621 confirmed cases of COVID-19 had been detected in the past 24 hours, a record daily total.
FILE: A member of the medical staff leaves a room protected by a transparent tarp after caring for a patient infected with COVID-19 in the intensive care unit of the Franco-Britannique hospital in Levallois-Perret, north of Paris, on 9 April 2020. Image: AFP
PARIS – The number of people who tested positive for coronavirus in France in the past 24 hours surpassed 30,000 for the first time, official data showed on Thursday.
France’s public health agency said a total of 30,621 confirmed COVID-19 cases had been detected in the past 24 hours, a record daily total.
The number of people who died from the new coronavirus during the same 24-hour period was 88, bringing the total number of deaths in France since the start of the pandemic to 33,125, the agency said.
The so-called positivity rate, the proportion of infected people out of the total number of those tested, rose to 12.6% on Thursday from 12.2% on Wednesday.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday ordered a nightly curfew in Paris and eight other French cities to contain the spread of COVID-19 as new daily infection rates reached alarming record levels.
For several days, the number of people admitted to intensive care has also increased, from 171 new patients on Monday to 226 on Tuesday, 193 on Wednesday and 219 on Thursday, the data showed.
The number of daily hospitalizations amounted to 1,741, 77 more than the previous day.
Health Minister Olivier Veran said France currently has about 5,800 beds in intensive care wards.
At the height of the pandemic in early April, more than 7,000 coronavirus patients were in intensive care. The number fell dramatically until the end of July, but has risen again since then.
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