The number of new cases identified on Tuesday is 180,777, against 116,618 seven days earlier, according to Public Health France.

The seven-day average, which smooths out the daily jolts, amounts to 98,928 cases, against 69,249 cases on average last Tuesday and 54,609 the previous day.

At the same time, the number of Covid patients in critical care, a highly scrutinized indicator, continues to decrease, with 1,604 people in intensive care units, against 1,632 the day before and 1,783 last Tuesday.

Hospitals are welcoming a total of 20,742 Covid patients (including 1,562 new patients), compared to 20,919 patients on March 15, thus marking a slowdown in the drop in the number of people hospitalized.

In France as elsewhere in Europe, the fifth wave of Covid-19 does not end: what worries now are hospitalizations, which are no longer falling, reviving criticism of a premature lifting of measures by the government.

At a press conference on Tuesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said several European countries, including Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom, had lifted their restrictions too "brutally". anti-Covid measures and were faced with a sharp rise in cases under the effect of the BA.2 sub-variant.

The director of the WHO in Europe, Hans Kluge, said he was "vigilant" about the current epidemic situation on the continent, while claiming to remain "optimistic".

More worryingly, the number of new hospital admissions has leveled off.

“For two days, the number of hospitalizations has not fallen,” noted the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, in Le Parisien on Monday.

In the past 24 hours, 146 deaths have been recorded, and 141,218 people have died since the start of the pandemic more than two years ago in hospitals, retirement homes or other medico-social establishments due to a Covid-19 infection.

On the vaccination side, 54.24 million people in total have received at least one injection (80.4% of the total population), according to the General Directorate of Health, and 53.32 million have a complete vaccination schedule (79.1 %).

© 2022 AFP