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France sets new record of 52,000 Covid-19 cases in one day

France set a new daily record for coronavirus infections with 52,010 recorded in 24 hours, official data showed Sunday, topping 50,000 for the first time.

Published: 25 October 2020 20:26 CET

France sets new record of 52,000 Covid-19 cases in one day

People walk in an almost empty street in Strasbourg, eastern France, on October 24th, 2020, as a nighttime virus curfew enters into force. Photo AFP

The Public Health France (SPF) authority said that 116 people had died over the same period, bringing the total number of fatalities since the start of the outbreak to 34,761.

France has also passed the symbolic marker of one million confirmed Covid cases since the pandemic began.

Meanwhile, 17 percent of those tested for the virus now have positive results, up from 4.5 percent in early September.

The French government has extended an overnight curfew to cover areas that are home to around 46 million people — or two out of every three French citizens.

On Friday, President Emmanuel Macron said it was too early to say whether a new lockdown was looming, after such a move was imposed nationwide for two months in the spring.

Member comments

Anonymous - 26 October 2020 at 07:53 CET

Now why doesn’t that surprise anyone with a brain. My village is full of Parisians opening up their holiday homes. Macron should have imposed travel restrictions again instead of useless curfews.

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France’s Covid-19 app to be 'put to sleep'

Covid-19 screening in France reaches an important milestone on Friday, June 30th, 2023 – when the TousAntiCovid app is officially ‘put to sleep’.

The app, which was launched in June 2020 as France came out of its first lockdown of the pandemic and has undergone a number of iterations, including as a delivery device for the health pass, will be switched off.

For most people, this anniversary will pass without mention. Few people have consulted the app in recent months, and it has sat dormant on many smartphones since France’s Covid-19 health pass requirement was suspended in March 2022.

Meanwhile, the Système d’Informations de DEPistage (SI-DEP) interface – which has been informing people about their test results since the Spring of 2020 – is also being shut down on June 30th, as per legal requirements.

The SI-DEP shutdown means that it will also be impossible to retrieve Covid test certificates issued before June 30th, should the need arise. All data held by the database will be “destroyed”, officials have said.

It has handled more than 320 million antigen and PCR tests since it was introduced.

This does not mean that testing for Covid-19 has stopped, or is now unnecessary. As reported recently, more than 1,000 deaths a week in Europe are still caused by the virus.

The shutdown of the national information system does not mean that people in France cannot still book an appointment for an antigen test at a pharmacy, or a PCR test at a laboratory. But the number of people going for testing is declining rapidly. In recent days, according to Le Parisien, just 15,000 people in France took a Covid test – the lowest number, it said, since the pandemic started.

Reimbursement rules for testing changed on March 1st, with only certain categories of people – minors, those aged 65 and over, or immunosuppressed patients – covered for the entire cost of testing.

From Friday, only PCR test results will be transmitted to authorities for data purposes, meaning pharmacists that only offer antigen testing will be locked out of the online interface to record test results.

The reason for the shift in priorities is to maintain “minimal epidemiological surveillance”, the Ministry of Health has reportedly told scientists.

As a result test certificates, showing a positive or negative result, will no longer be issued from July 1st. Since February 1st, anyone taking a test has had to give consent to share their data in order to obtain a certificate.

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