PARIS (Reuters) – France reported 21,231 confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Saturday, slightly above 20,701 on Friday.
The death toll in France from COVID-19 infections rose from 199 to 81,647, the seventh-highest death toll worldwide, from 320 on Friday.
There were 10,037 new patients hospitalized with the disease over the past seven days and 1,795 new admissions to intensive care units (ICUs) during the period, the Ministry of Health said.
In contrast to some of its neighbors struggling to control more contagious variants, France has resisted resorting to a new blockade, hoping there will be a national curfew from December 15, first at 8 p.m. then at 6 p.m., to contain the pandemic.
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told BFM television on Saturday that the French population had just been patient and that a new blockade could only be “the last options when all the others have been tried”.
However, some scientists believe that President Emmanuel Macron opted to decide against a new blockade despite the threat of highly contagious COVID-19 variants.
Arnaud Fontanet, a member of the scientific council advising the government on COVID-19 policy, told Europe 1 radio on Saturday that he feared the variant first detected in Britain could represent the majority of cases in March.
In the Moselle region in eastern France, where cases have increased by varying, the prefecture ruled out at least for now closing schools or implementing a local closure that some local officials had requested.
The total cumulative number of cases in France increased to 3,448,617, the sixth highest in the world.
Report by Dominique Vidalon; Edited by Angus MacSwan