Covid-19 France: lowest number of deaths recorded
There were 242 new deaths from Covid-19 in the 24-hour period Saturday - Sunday, the general director of health Jérôme Salomon announced last night.
It means 22,856 people are now registered as dying from the virus in France.
Of these recent deaths, 152 were recorded in hospitals, the lowest daily hospital death toll in five weeks. Ninety died in retirement homes.
4,682 patients are still in intensive care but the number is continuing to decrease. There were 4,725 the day before and the number has been decreasing for 18 consecutive days now.
Since the beginning of the epidemic, 87,985 people have been hospitalised and 44,903 have returned home.
There have been 2,8million cases and 201,315 deaths in the world, including over a million cases and 116,417 deaths in Europe, says the national health agency, Santé Publique France.
However, a main doctors’ union, MG France, says the real number of deaths is higher than that announced every day and estimates that there have been 9,000 extra deaths from Covid-19 in France which have not been included in the figures.
The union has investigated and questioned general practitioners in every department to evaluate how many of their patients had the Covid-19 and died at home.
Deaths at home are not part of the daily death rate announced to the public. Some cases are also suspected to have had the Covid-19 virus but have not been tested so it can be difficult to take them into account.
