France Reaches ’Painful’ Landmark as COVID-19 Kills 20,000

By Staff, Agencies

France on Monday announced it had become the fourth country worldwide to register over 20,000 deaths from the novel coronavirus, after recording 547 new fatalities in the epidemic.

"Tonight, our country has passed a barrier that is symbolic and particularly painful," top health official Jerome Salomon told reporters.

He announced that the country's total death toll was 20,265, while welcoming new falls in the numbers in hospital and intensive care.

Salomon, meanwhile, noted that the coronavirus death toll was now well above the 14,000 people who died in France's worst recent flu epidemic and even topped the 19,000 killed by the 2003 heat wave.

France is the fourth country to record more than 20,000 deaths, following the United States, by far the worst affected worldwide, Italy and Spain.

Its death toll includes 12,513 people who died in hospital and 7,752 people who lost their lives in old people's homes and other nursing homes.

But Salomon also welcomed data indicating that a person with COVID-19 in France was now infecting on average fewer than one other person, as opposed to three before the country went into lockdown more than a month ago.

"This is how we will manage to put the brakes on the epidemic," he said.

The number of people in intensive care infected with COVID-19 fell for the 12th day in a row, by 61 patients to 5,863.

"The fall... is being confirmed but it remains very slight," said Salomon.

Meanwhile the number of patients in hospital fell by 26, the sixth successive daily decrease, to 30,584.