PARIS (Reuters) – France reported 28,383 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, down from 45,522 on Tuesday and below the nearly 36,000 of last Wednesday as pressure on the hospital system continued to ease.
Health ministry data showed that the number of people in hospital with the virus dropped by 328 to 32,842, while the number of people in intensive care units (ICU) with COVID-19 dropped by 79 to 4,775 over the past 24 hours.
The number of people in ICUs, which is the best measure of a health system’s ability to cope with the pandemic, has dropped in three of the past five days, after stabilising at the end of last week.
Although the number of new confirmed cases per day – now at a seven-day average of over 28,000 – has soared well above levels seen in the first lockdown in the spring, the number of people in ICUs, now at 4,775, has stayed well below the peak of 7,148 in April.
The number of people who have died from the disease this year rose by 425 to 46,698 on Wednesday.
(Reporting by GV De Clercq; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
