South west France and Covid case rises: ‘We must stay vigilant’

There has been a “marked” increase in Covid-19 cases in Occitanie and Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France’s government spokesperson Gabriel Attal said this afternoon (June 2).

He was speaking after the government’s weekly health meeting concerning Covid-19.

“We cannot let our guard down,” he said.

“In Occitanie and in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, we are sometimes seeing marked increases in the circulation of the virus.”

Mr Attal said the reproduction rate had returned to above 1 in some areas, "which means that the epidemic is once again gaining ground."

The situation was particularly concerning in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, where the number of cases have increased by nearly 80% in one week, and to a lesser extent in Charente-Maritime, Lot-et-Garonne, Charente, Les Landes and Gironde.

He said that this was an alert that should not be ignored.

Despite Mr Attal’s comments, the number of cases of Covid-19 per 100,000 people in both regions is lower than the national average.

Occitanie has an average of 71 cases of Covid-19 per 100,000 people and Nouvelle-Aquitaine has 72. The national average is 91.

In general, the number of new Covid-19 cases in France is decreasing. An average of 8,742 were reported each day in the past week, a decrease of 27% from the previous week, figures on Covidtracker.fr show.

Mr Attal said that 50% of all adults in France had now received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.

There are also now fewer than 3,000 people in intensive care units due to Covid-19, a drop of 18% from the week before.

Ile-de-France has the highest number of Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people in metropolitan France, with 119.

Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur has the lowest, at 61 cases per 100,000 people.

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