The Director General of Health, Jérôme Salomon, estimated that despite the tensions in the hospital services of Île-de-France, confinement in the region is only a "measure of last resort".
A toughening of measures should therefore not be announced at the end of the Defense Council which is being held this Wednesday morning.
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Nationally, the number of patients treated for Covid-19 in intensive care units continues to increase in France.
The very high load in Hauts-de-France, Provence Alpes-Côte d'Azur and Ile-de-France requires new transfers of patients to other regions.
The northern prefecture also announced on Tuesday that the confinement in force in the Dunkirk conurbation was extended for three additional weekends.
This Wednesday a new Defense Council is to be held in order to take stock of the evolution of the health situation in the country.
The main information to remember:
A Defense Council will be held this Wednesday morning at the Elysee
Containment has been extended for the next three weekends in Dunkirk and its surroundings
The pandemic has killed at least 2.6 million people worldwide
A Defense Council this Wednesday morning at the Elysée
A Defense Council will be held this Wednesday morning at the Elysee Palace while the number of Covid-19 contaminations is still as high in Ile-de-France.
However, no major announcement should a priori be announced at its end concerning the departments under surveillance for a week.
Local adjustments "on a case-by-case basis" seems the only assumption on the table.
The Paris region, faced with the English variant of the coronavirus, more contagious, has seen the number of Covid-19 patients skyrocket in the intensive care units of its hospitals, up to 1,018 patients on Tuesday for "less than 1,050" beds available in theory, according to the Regional Health Agency (ARS).
The ARS gave "the firm order" to hospitals and clinics to deprogram 40% of their medical and surgical activities to increase reception capacities.
The government had given up last week to impose a weekend confinement in Ile-de-France, the most populous region of the country (12 million inhabitants), in the face of reluctance in particular from the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo and the regional president Valérie Pécresse.
This measure was limited to Pas-de-Calais, after the coast of the Alpes-Maritimes and Dunkirk.
For this territory, neighboring Pas-de-Calais, confinement has been extended for another three weekends, or five in total.
89,327 deaths in France in total, more than 3,900 patients in intensive care
The number of patients with Covid-19 in intensive care continued to increase on Tuesday, to 3,918 including 421 admitted in the last 24 hours, according to hospital data published by the health authorities.
The number of patients in sheaves, the service which receives the most serious cases, has increased by 69 in 24 hours.
A week ago it stood at 3,586.
Lowered below the 2,600 mark at the beginning of January, this indicator has continued to rise since then and is now at the level of the end of November.
However, it is still far from the peak of the second wave in autumn (4,900 in mid-November) and the first wave in spring (7,000 in early April).
On Tuesday, 299 deaths from Covid-19 in hospital were recorded, bringing the total death toll since the start of the epidemic a year ago to 89,327, including 64,083 in hospital.
Concerns about the first shortages of ingredients for vaccines
Ingredients, glass to make the vials, plastic, caps: shortages appear in the supply chain for the production of anti-Covid-19 vaccines, the main players in the sector, including the WHO, worried on Tuesday, calling for lifting obstacles to their commercialization.
The pharmaceutical industry expects to produce 10 billion doses of vaccines this year, double the manufacturing capacity of 2019, all vaccines combined.
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Italy to produce Sputnik V
The Russian Sputnik V vaccine will be produced in Italy from July, a first in the European Union which has not yet authorized it.
The EU started its review of the vaccine by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) last week, but Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have already placed orders from Russia.
Russia strongly denounced the words of an official of the EAJ who compared the emergency authorization of the Sputnik V vaccine by certain European countries to the "Russian roulette".
More than 2.6 million dead
The pandemic has killed at least 2.6 million people worldwide since the end of December 2019, according to the latest report established by AFP from official sources.
The United States is the most affected country with 527,612 deaths, followed by Brazil (268,370), Mexico (190,923), India (157,930) and the United Kingdom (124,566).
These figures, which are based on the daily reports of the health authorities without including the reassessments based on statistical bases, are generally underestimated.