France is facing "a tidal wave" of contamination, in the words of Minister of Health Olivier Véran.
Some 208,000 new cases were identified in 24 hours, sweeping away the nearly 180,000 contaminations of the day before, a figure hitherto unmatched since the start of the pandemic.
"There would be a drop of 50 to 70% of hospitalizations with Omicron", estimated the Minister of Health before the Committee on Laws of the Assembly without reassuring: "If you have a variant which is 3 times less dangerous, but whether you have 6 or 7 times more cases, the health impact is being felt anyway. "
This Wednesday, 17,856 Covid-19 patients are thus treated at the hospital, while there were 17,405 on Tuesday and 16,118 last Wednesday.
Among these patients, Public Health France has 3,469 patients in critical care, against 3,416 the day before and 3,147 on December 22.
The agency also recorded 1,949 new hospital admissions in the past 24 hours, a figure that has risen sharply from last week when 1,404 new patients were recorded.
185 new deaths are also to be deplored, bringing the total of deaths to at least 123,200 in France.
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The minister believes that the best weapon against this situation remains vaccination: "I say it to those who watch us and who would not be vaccinated: there is really little chance that you can pass between the drops," says he does.
Yesterday, the Directorate General of Health reported that 5.3 million people had not yet been vaccinated.
