PARIS (Reuters) – France’s coronavirus death toll rose by 87 or 0.3% to 29,296 on Tuesday, the highest daily toll since June 2, but remained under 100 for the seventh day in a row, health ministry data showed.
On Monday, 54 COVID-19 deaths were reported, on Sunday 13.
The number of daily confirmed coronavirus infections increased by 403 or 0.3% to 154,591, up on the 211 seen on Monday and 343 on Sunday, but remained below the more than 500 seen on Thursday through Saturday.
The number of people in hospital with COVID-19 continued its weeks-long decline and fell by 354 to 11,961, while the number of people in intensive care units fell below 1,000 for the first time since March 19, down 69 to 955.
Both numbers are important measures of a health system’s ability to deal with the epidemic.
After the government lifted a strict 55-day lockdown on May 11, the hospital and mortality data have been on steady downtrends, but the number of new confirmed infections has stubbornly remained at a few hundred per day.
In the past seven days, France counted an average of 467 new infections per day compared to an average of 478 the first week after lockdown ended.
Besides confirmed cases, France also reports probable cases, but these have not been updated in more than a week.
Adding last week’s probable cases – about 37,000 – to Tuesday’s confirmed cases yields a total of 191,588 cases, putting France in ninth place in the world by that count, behind Spain, Italy and Peru, and ahead of Germany.
(Reporting by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
