PARIS (Reuters) -Pressure on the French hospital system from the coronavirus pandemic eased for the fourth day in row on Friday and the number of COVID-19 deaths in hospitals was down again compared to a week ago.
The health ministry reported that the number of people in hospital with the virus fell by 654 to 26,331 and the number of people in intensive care by 125 to 5,106.
France also reported 226 new coronavirus deaths in hospitals, from 219 on Thursday and 270 a week ago, and 25 new deaths in retirement care homes over the past three days. The cumulative number of deaths now stands at 106,101.
The increase in new cases continued to slow down with 19,124 new cases taking the total to 5.74 million, an increase of 2.32% compared to a week ago and the slowest week-on-week increase since late July 2020.
(Reporting by Geert De Clercq, Editing Dominique Vidalon and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
