I saw a headline this morning that 9,843 new COVID-19 cases were reported yesterday. The article did not say anything about new hospitalizations or daily deaths going up exponentially.
France – New COVID-19 Cases
I pulled up a French source (https://www.france24.com/en/20200910-france-logs-10-000-new-cases-in-24-hours-a-record-since-the-start-of-covid-19-epidemic) to get more details. Nearly 49,000 new COVID-19 cases were reported last week.
France tested one million of its citizens during that week. The COVID-19 positive rate was 5.4%. The article above reported that hospitals were not overburdened, and deaths were low compared to months ago. No specific numbers were given for those hospitalized or daily deaths.
France – Daily Deaths
(https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/france/) provides daily details for every country. It takes 17-21 days from infection to death being reported from COVID-19. This week the new COVID-19 cases were averaging around 7,000/day. A week before it was 5,400/day. Two weeks ago, it was 4,500 and the week before that it was 2,800/day.
However, the daily deaths are still in low single or double digits. The average is 22 daily deaths for the month of September. This rate is up incrementally over the week before and two weeks ago.
The daily death rate is not indicative of the virus running out of control. Could it be that more daily testing detecting more people with low to mild cases of COVID-19?
France – Hospitalizations
There are 101,000 hospital beds available in France as of yesterday. Available ICU beds were listed at 2,121 beds. With all the new COVID-19 cases being reported, only 615 are identified as serious. It appears that France is well prepared for new viral infections.
France – Social Contact
France has a three-foot social distance rule. I talk to a friend of mine who lives and works in France every week. Face masks are mandatory for any person entering a store. He reported that most businesses have people enforcing the mask requirement. The shopping cart is used as the definitive measure for social distance.
What is causing more people to become infected? Maybe it is the Tour de France which halted for COVID-19 and is active again? The Riviera and Provence areas of France are the current hot spots for new cases.
Conclusion
United State college campuses are seeing rapid increases in new COVID-19 cases. Maybe France is seeing a similar result with thousands becoming infected and hardly any hospitalizations. The daily death rate also affirms the fact that the SARS-Co-V-2 virus is not as big a factor as headlines would indicate.
Live Longer & Enjoy Life! – Red O’Laughlin – RedOLaughlin.com
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