France continues in its record climb of daily infections and this Thursday registered 91,068 in the last 24 hours, “the worst figures since the beginning of the pandemic,” warned the French Minister of Health, Olivier Véran.
The strength of the omicron variant and the Christmas festivities, which incite more contacts between people, lead France towards 100,000 daily contaminations, which, according to Véran, will be reached in a few days. The rise in infections is also attributed to the fact that the French are undergoing very high screening tests, about 6 million in the week of December 13 to 19, a record.
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“Ómicron circulates a lot, although, for the moment, it is not causing waves of hospitalizations,” said the minister, during a visit this Thursday to a Parisian vaccination center.
The weekly incidence rate remains at 550.4 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. The positive rate has risen to 7.2% and the reproduction rate stands at 1.1.
The French Government considers that the epidemic situation is “critical” due to the omicron variant, but it will not take new measures – the health passport is currently in force, which will be reinforced – at least until next Monday, depending on the evolution in the hospitals.
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Vaccination, which since Wednesday is open to children from 5 to 11 years old, is going at a good rate, with almost 600,000 injections in the last 24 hours, most of them as souvenirs, according to data from the Ministry of Health released today.
Currently, 21 million people residing in France have three injections, practically a third of the total population of the country.
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