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French authorities have put seven more departments covering major cities like Lille, Strasbourg and Dijon on high alert as the rise in Covid-19 infections accelerates, the government said.
Of the 101 departments of mainland France and overseas, 28 are now considered “red zones” where the authorities will be able to impose exceptional measures to reduce the number of new cases of coronavirus.
The move comes as France reported a record nearly 9,000 daily cases on Friday and another 8,550 cases in the past 24 hours, as the positivity rate for tests across the country rose to 4.7%.
Paris and the Bouches-du-Rhone department encompassing the southeastern city of Lyon were the first to be put on high alert by the government on August 14 after infection rates began to climb.
That prompted local officials to demand face masks in all public spaces to curb the spread of the virus, hoping to prevent a spike in cases that could again overwhelm hospitals as fall approaches.
Health agency Sante Publique France, which warned of “exponential” increases in the burden of cases, said on Saturday that 53 new clusters of outbreaks had been discovered in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total number under investigation to 484.
Twelve more deaths from Covid-19 were reported, with a total balance of 30,698 since the pandemic broke out last March.
Concerns about infection risks have already led officials to close 22 schools after cases were detected just days after students returned from summer vacation last week, and dozens of individual classes were also suspended.
The French government said preschool teachers, as well as those with deaf students, will soon receive transparent masks to facilitate understanding at a crucial educational stage for young children.
“More than 100,000 of these masks will be produced by the end of this month,” the secretary of state in charge of people with disabilities, Sophie Cluzel, told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper.
Read more: Latest coronavirus stories
Researchers from Costa Rica to test equine antibody treatment
Researchers in Costa Rica should begin trials of an inexpensive treatment against coronavirus based on antibodies extracted from horses injected with SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, according to scientists.
Developed by the Clodomiro Picado Institute of the University of Costa Rica, the equine antibody drug will be tested in 26 patients starting in mid-September, Roman Macaya, president of the Social Security Fund that runs public health centers, told Reuters. .
Costa Rican authorities hope they can begin applying the treatment more widely in hospitals if the results of the phase 2 study are encouraging. There are 471 hospitalized coronavirus patients in Costa Rica.
“We are proud to know that this product will save lives until the vaccine reaches the population,” said Alberto Alape, coordinator of the ICP project.
“We do it with our resources, without having to queue or compete with other countries, as can be seen with possible vaccines.”
Similar efforts are also underway in Argentina and Brazil, while scientists in Belgium are using llamas.
Costa Rican researchers say their method for treating Covid-19 is based on the experience of using horse antibodies to develop snake antidotes.
They imported the virus protein from China and the UK and injected it into six of the 110 horses the IPC uses for testing.
Weeks later, when the animals developed enough antibodies, they drew blood and used the antibodies from the plasma as the raw material for the injectable serum.
If it works, the researchers say they want to share the economic treatment with other Central American nations, most of which are poorer than Costa Rica.
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