French New COVID-19 Cases At Seven-week High

PARIS: France’s new COVID-19 infections are on average increasing by more than 18,000 a day, a seven-week high, and the number of people hospitalised is rising again as the country grapples with the more infectious variant of the virus first found in Britain.

These latest trends, published on Monday, will be discussed in the coming days by the government which is pondering whether to impose a third national lockdown and extend a 6 p.m. curfew, now enforced in some areas, to all of France.

The French health ministry reported 3,582 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours, a figure lower than Sunday’s 15,944 and than last Monday’s 4,022.

It also said more than 138,000 people had so far received vaccine doses, as it ramps up an immunization campaign so far focused on elderly care home residents, healthcare workers and other exposed or vulnerable groups.

French authorities have identified three more cases of the more infectious COVID-19 variant now spreading in the UK,…