PARIS, Jan 5 (Reuters) – A “supersonic” rise in French COVID-19 cases is set to continue in the coming days and there are no signs of the trend reversing, French government spokesman Gabriel Attal said on Wednesday.
He also said that infections were reaching “stratospheric levels” in the Ile-de-France region around Paris and some other parts of France and said that the situation in hospitals could worsen in coming weeks.
Attal also said that the government has decreed a health state of emergency in the French regions of Guadeloupe, Guyana, Mayotte, Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélémy, where the infection rate is soaring.
At the end of the December, a health state of emergency was decreed in La Réunion and was extended in Martinique, where it has been in place since mid-July.
On Tuesday, France reported a record 271,686 new COVID-19 infections over 24 hours.
Reporting by Dominique Vidalon and Myriam Rivet, writing by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Jon Boyle and Frank Jack Daniel
