Coronavirus: France sees post-lockdown daily record of 4,711 new infections

France reports 4,711 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours on Thursday, a post-lockdown record and a level last seen during the height of the epidemic in France, but the number of people in hospital with the disease fell.

During lockdown, France saw a peak of 7,578 infections per day on March 31, but since then, there have been only a few days when the number of new infections per day rose above 4,500, all in the first half of April.

Since then, the number of new infections per day has crept up to about 1,000 by the end of July, with an acceleration from mid-August. The seven-day moving average now stands close to 3,000, a level last seen mid-April.

The ministry said that over the past week, France had done over 664,000 virus tests and over six million since the start of the epidemic.

It said that the percentage of positive tests was increasing and stood at 3.3 percent in the week of Aug. 11-17, compared to 2.1 percent in the first week of August, and more than double the 1.5 percent seen in the last 10 days of July.

Reuters