Restaurant terraces across France will reopen on May 19, Health Minister Olivier Véran confirmed on Monday May 10.

"It's happy. The conditions allow it (...) The epidemic continues to decrease (...) and the health pressure on our hospitals, on our resuscitations, is decreasing," he said on the channel LCI.

The number of patients with Covid-19 in intensive care units in France dropped back below the threshold of 5,000 for the first time since March 29, according to data from the Ministry of Health.

"The outlook is rather good, but that does not mean that we should relax our efforts too much: we maintain barrier gestures, distance, but we find a little life," said Olivier Véran.

Progress of vaccination 

According to the minister, more than 450,000 people were vaccinated this weekend, "which makes this the best weekend in terms of vaccination since the start of the campaign," he said. said.

Regarding the Indian variant of Covid-19, the minister said that France "was at 20 people infected at the end of last week with the Indian variant, spread over five groups of cases".

"So there is not a massive release of this variant at the moment," he said.

With Reuters

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