PARIS
As parks and public spaces opened across France on Saturday, different figures related to the novel coronavirus rose and fell. The latest statistics were reported by France’s Ministry of Health.
A total of 57 fatalities were registered in hospitals on Saturday, a drop by six cases compared to Friday’s figures. The total number of fatalities in hospitals overall has reached 18,444 and the total in nursing homes 10,327. France’s Ministry of Health is holding off on reporting official numbers for nursing home facilities until further notice.
The death toll in France since the start of the outbreak stands at 28,771 with cases rising to 151,496, a sharp increase of 1,828 cases over the previous day.
The number of hospitalizations dropped, with cases now standing at 14,380, down by 315 patients from the day before. Those in intensive care fell to 1,325, down by 36 patients from Friday.
There have been 109 new clusters of coronavirus SARS-Cov-2 – which causes Covid-19 – identified in France since deconfinement began on May 11, but all are now under control, health authorities have confirmed.
The clusters were identified but none has spread to become a new epidemic, and “there are no more signals suggesting that the epidemic will restart”, said health agency Santé Publique France (SPF).
In its latest weekly summary, on Friday May 29, SPF said: “109 clusters (outside of elderly care homes and restricted family environments) have been reported: 104 in mainland France, and five in overseas departments and regions.
“No uncontrolled community spread (occurrence of new cases outside the community and related to the cluster) has been reported.”
Each cluster is now either “under control” (no new cases in the past seven days since the last reported case) or extinct (no new cases in the last 14 days)”, SPF said.
Health authorities reminded people that a rise in cluster cases was “not bad news in itself”, and was actually a sign of better reporting, as long as the positive cases were isolated. Of these 109 positive clusters, SPF said, “64% had more than five cases”.
It said: “They concern mainly people in a precarious and vulnerable situation (19% establishments of social housing, and 6% vulnerable communities), health establishments (22%), and more generally, businesses (20% private and public businesses).”
Improved estimates
The agency added that it estimated there had been “149,071 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in France” between January 21 and May 28. This number was based on new “more exhaustive” estimates based on “data from patients tested in town laboratories and hospital laboratories” (a system known as SI-DEP).
The number of positive results from virological PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests – which tell if the person being tested has the virus at the time of testing – is an important indication to whether the epidemic is restarting again.
From May 18-24, “216,891 patients were tested” for Covid-19, of which 4,119 were positive (1.9%).
SPF said: “Over the past seven weeks, epidemiological indicators of the spread of SARS-CoV-2 are on the decrease or are remaining at low levels across mainland France.”
These indicators (deaths, hospitalisations, intensive care admissions etc) also show that “the proportion of new cases among elderly care home residents has dropped over the past 14 days, compared to the 14 days before that”, SPF said.
Despite the severity of the virus, most people experience mild symptoms and recover. Since the beginning of record-keeping for the disease, 68,268 people have recovered in France from the epidemic and have returned home.
After originating in China last December, COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has spread to 188 countries and regions across the world. Europe and the US are currently the worst-hit regions.
The pandemic has killed almost 367,000 people, with total infections reaching nearly 6 million, while just over 2.5 million people have recovered from the disease, according to figures compiled by the US-based Johns Hopkins University.