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By Dominique Vidalon
PARIS, Feb 9 (Reuters) - The COVID-19 situation in France is
currently stable and the government was right to have decided
against imposing a new national lockdown, Health Minister
Olivier Veran said on Tuesday
Veran also told France Info radio "it is possible and indeed
preferable" that France would not have to be locked down again.
"For three weeks we have had (on average) 20,000 new cases
per day and 3,000-3,200 patients in intensive care units. It's
stable but high...It does not call for national lockdown
measures," Veran said.
The number of people in France who have died from COVID-19
infections rose by 458 on Monday to 79,423 - the seventh-highest
death toll globally.
Unlike some of its neighbours, France has refrained from
imposing a third national lockdown, hoping that a curfew in
place since Dec. 15 and a vaccination programme that has now
given shots to more than 2 million people will be enough to rein
in the spread of the disease.
Veran said he expected that between 3.5 milllion and 4
million people in France would have received their first dose of
a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of February.
Some health officials have however warned about the strain
being placed on the hospital system and the impact of more
contagious variants of the coronavirus.
Veran reiterated that the AstraZeneca's vaccine was
efficient against 99% of the COVID-19 strains in France but that
France was considering using vaccines other than AstraZeneca's
vaccine for overseas territories.
"We are monitoring the progression of the South African
variant, notably in {the French island of) Mayotte. We are
considering increasing the protection of health workers in
overseas territories," he said
South Africa decided to put on hold use of AstraZeneca's
COVID-19 shot in its vaccination programme after data showed it
gave minimal protection against mild-to-moderate infection
caused by the country's dominant coronavirus variant.
Health authorities reported 4,317 new confirmed COVID-19
cases in France on Monday, down from 19,715 on Sunday and 4,347
last Monday. The number of people in hospital with the virus
went up by 343, to 28,037.
(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon, Editing by Gareth Jones and
Angus MacSwan)
