France reports 854 COVID19 deaths in past 24 hours, highest daily figure since April 15

Last Wednesday, we wrote about France after 523 French people died of coronavirus in just 24 hours. A few hours later, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a month-long nationwide lockdown to stem the tide of the deadly virus.

Now, it seems the situation is getting worse as 854 new COVID-19 deaths were recorded in the past 24 hours alone, the highest daily figure since April 15. Since yesterday, 36,330 new confirmed cases were reported, bringing the accumulative total infections to 1,502,763. The total number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients increased by 1,122 to 26,265, including 3,878 in intensive care, up by 148 in a day.

“When the Republic is faced with the most serious health crisis in decades, we do not ask the mayors, servants of the Republic, to violate the laws of the Republic. It is not possible,” said Castex when asked by deputies at the National Assembly.

In the meantime, while the rest of Europe is going through the second round of lockdowns, Sweden remains the only country where life has returned back to normal. The tiny Scandinavian country, which never had a lockdown, saw its COVID-19 cases going down at a time when countries across Europe are seeing alarming surges in daily coronavirus infections.

France is currently on the fourth day of its second nationwide lockdown to stem the second wave of the coronavirus lockdown. Health authorities and medical experts warned that it may take days or even weeks before epidemic indicators go downward thanks to the restrictive measures because the symptoms may appear 2 to 14 days after exposure to the virus.