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PARIS (Reuters) – A Parisian is infected with COVID-19 every 30 seconds, while every 15 minutes a Parisian arrives at the hospital as a result of the disease, Health Minister Olivier Veran said on Tuesday.
Veran made the comments to RTL Radio in response to demands from Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo to open small bookstores and other smaller stores to try to keep commerce and social activity going despite a new closure in France.
Veran said any such move was too risky given the high rates of COVID-19 infection in the French capital.
“You cannot ignore the fact that every 15 minutes, in Paris hospitals, there is a sick person who has been hospitalized with COVID. You cannot ignore that every 30 seconds, there is a Parisian who has been contaminated,” Veran said. .
“We want to save the Parisians and the French people and we do so with determination and consistency,” he added.
France reported a record 52,518 new COVID-19s on Monday, while the death toll from COVID-19 in the country rose by 416 to 37,435.
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Edited by Andrew Heavens)
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