Breaking News: France Surpasses More Than 10,000 Daily Coronavirus Cases

Coronavirus cases in France surged past the ‘crucial’ 10,000 limit in just one day, setting a new record for the country after a total of 10,561 new cases were registered.  The previous record of 9,843 new infections was broken on Thursday, reported the French health authorities.

Saturday’s worrying record figure came a day after French Prime Minister Jean Castex warned on Friday that there has been a “clear worsening” in France of the spread of Covid-19, which has “not lowered in intensity” and “will still be with us for some months”.

The rise led the government to propose additional measures on Friday in a bid to avert a return to the general lockdown put in place earlier in the year. Officials say it will take a few weeks for the new measures to take effect. Prime minister Jean Castex also promised to speed up tests and toughen local measures in high-infection zones.

Jean-François Delfraissy, who heads the scientific panel counselling the French government on coronavirus matters, said on Wednesday that the government would be “obliged to take a certain number of difficult decisions within the next eight to 10 days at most”.

In its daily update, the French health ministry also reported that 772 clusters were being investigated- an increase of 86 in the past 24 hours. Over the past week, there had been 2,432 hospital admissions for Covid-19, including 417 entries into intensive care units, the ministry said. The death toll since the start of the coronavirus outbreak this year in French hospitals and nursing homes has reached 30,910, with 17 deaths recorded in the past 24 hours, it added.