PARIS, December 23 (Reuters) – Faced with a new wave of the COVID-19 epidemic, France could experience “hundreds of thousands” of cases of infection per day in January, Arnaud Fontanet warned on Thursday, member of the scientific council, while the daily number of contaminations is already rising to a higher level.
“We have the maximum number of cases currently on French territory, which we have never seen since March 2020 (…). We expect on this basis (…) that that we have hundreds of thousands of cases per day in January, “said Arnaud Fontanet during a press conference of the scientific council, according to statements broadcast by BFMTV.
France reported 84,272 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, which is a record since the start of the pandemic.
The Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, for his part warned on Wednesday that the country would “very likely exceed 100,000 contaminations per day by the end of the month”, due to the extremely rapid spread of the Omicron variant, which is particularly contagious .
Faced with this renewed epidemic, the government announced the expansion of the vaccine campaign against COVID-19 to all children aged five to 11 years and plans to accelerate the implementation of the vaccine pass which should encourage unvaccinated people to take the plunge by depriving them of the health pass. (Report Blandine Hénault, edited by)
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