France to announce unwanted record of 350,000 Covid infections over 24 hours

Cases rise in France as WHO warns of “tidal wave” of Omicron cases spreading across Europe

People queue outside a pharmacy to receive Covid-19 antigen tests in Marseille as Covid-19 cases soar across Europe (AFP via Getty Images)

France will announce a record of more than 350,000 Covid infections recorded within the last 24 hours, the country’s health minister has said.

The previous record was set on January 5 when the nation recorded 332,252 new daily cases. Since then France has seen two more days where infections have risen over 300,000 as the Omicron variant takes over Europe.

Health minister Olivier Veran told MPs on Tuesday: “Another 350,000 new infections will be reported this evening, even a little more than that. We have never before seen such numbers since the start of the health crisis”.

The county saw another big jump in hospitalisations reported on Monday, with 22,749 people now been treated in hospital with coronavirus. This was the biggest increase since April 2021.

However some good news has come out of the French hospital data, which unlike the UK, breaks down admissions by coronavirus variant. Data from the end of December shows that patients infected with Omicron mainly go to conventional hospital settings rather than critical care, with the new variant making up 54 per cent of those admitted to the former and only 19 per cent of patients admitted to the later.

Of those people who weren’t treated in intensive care, 43 percent of Omicron patients remained in care for less than a day. This was significantly shorter than for Delta patients, of whom only 19 percent left hospital after less than a day.

The French health minister’s comments follow warning from the World Health Organisation that a “tidal wave” of coronavirus is spreading across Europe.

The WHO’s Europe director Dr Hans Kluge said on Tuesday that more than half of the continent’s population could be infected by Omicron within the next two months.

He said that Omicron “represents a new west to east tidal wave” and revealed that “as of January 10, 26 countries report that over one percent of their population is catching Covid each week”.