PARIS, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) -- France has registered 22,591 new cases of coronavirus infection in the last 24 hours, according to data released by the Public Health Agency on Wednesday. It is the third time since last Friday that the daily new cases went above the 20,000 threshold.
The accumulative total of infections now stands at 779,063 and the death toll went up by 104 to reach 33,037.
Currently 9,194 COVID-19 patients are in hospital, including 1,673 in intensive care, up by 245 and 31 respectively in one day.
France has been in a second wave of the epidemic with an average of 20,000 new cases per day in recent weeks. In mid-March when the first wave started to overwhelm hospitals with an influx of patients, the government was forced to put the population under strict lockdown to contain the outbreak. Since May restrictive rules had pushed down infections to below 1,000 before they rebounded during summer holidays.
To contain the second wave, a curfew would apply to the great Paris region and eight big cities starting from Friday midnight, President Emmanuel Macron announced in a televised interview on Wednesday evening. Details of the new measure will be unveiled by Prime Minister Jean Castex on Thursday.
"We will have it until the summer of 2021 at least with this virus," said Macron, calling on the French people to stay hopeful and clear-headed and united.
"We must stop those sorts of permanent debates over the facts or the scientific truth (...) If we base ourselves on the facts, we can say 'it is serious, it is serious, let's mobilize.' The reason to hope is that we are relearning to be fully a nation," he said.
"The more each and everyone respects these rules, the more we will manage together to slow down (the virus)," he stressed.
As the world is struggling to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, countries including France, China, Russia, Britain and the United States are racing to find a vaccine. According to the website of the World Health Organization, as of Oct. 2, there were 193 COVID-19 candidate vaccines being developed worldwide, and 42 of them were in clinical trials. Enditem
