France has registered an additional 531 deaths linked to the new coronavirus in the past 24 hours, which brings the total toll to 20,796 deaths since the start of the pandemic, announced on Tuesday April 21 the director general of health, Jérôme Salomon.

The declining trends in the number of hospitalized patients, particularly in intensive care units, have also been confirmed, he added during his daily press briefing.

🔴DIRECT | #Coronavirus # COVID19
➡ Follow the situation on April 21
🎙 Pr Jérôme Salomon, Director General of Healthhttps: //t.co/3MeitJeLdi

- Ministry of Solidarity and Health (@MinSoliSante) April 21, 2020

In detail, since March 1, 12,900 people have died in hospitals and 7,896 others have died in social and medical-social establishments, including nursing homes.

France has also recorded since the start of the epidemic 117,324 confirmed cases of contamination with SARS-CoV-2, an increase of 2,667 new cases in the last 24 hours.

Decrease in intensive care patients

The trend, however, has been going down for the past seven days for the number of patients currently hospitalized, which stands at 30,106 compared to 30,584 the previous day, representing a negative balance of 478 patients.

A decline is also observed and this, for the thirteenth consecutive day, in the intensive care units where there are 5,433 serious cases, Tuesday, against 5,683 Monday, which represents 250 fewer people in 24 hours and a lower since March 30. A peak was reached in the intensive care unit on April 8. There were then 7,148 patients there.

Caution

"The circulation of the virus remains at a high level, so we must remain fully mobilized," repeated Jérôme Salomon, recalling the importance of respecting confinement and "barrier gestures" to counter the spread of the disease.

"What we do today and tomorrow conditions the number of patients in intensive care on May 11", date on which, if all goes well, will begin progressive deconfinement in France, said number 2 of the Ministry of Health . "We are all standing on the brakes and we can all influence the number of patients in intensive care on May 11," he insisted.

Since the start of the epidemic, more than 39,000 people have been healed from French hospitals.

With AFP and Reuters

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