France's total COVID-19 infections surpass 1.7m, deaths top 40,000

PARIS — France's cumulative number of confirmed COVID-19 cases since the outbreak of the epidemic stood at 1,748,705 and the total number of COVID-19-related fatalities topped 40,000, the Public Health Agency said on Saturday.

A further 306 people had lost their lives to the virus, raising the death toll to 40,169, the agency added.

The total number of confirmed cases went up by a record 86,852 from the 1,661,853 registered on Friday. But French health authorities did not specify whether the massive spike of cases was all confirmed in the past 24 hours.

"The entire flow of test results is re-established between the national SI-DEP collector (the country's digital tools for COVID-19 screening) and Public Health France. The correction of the figures as well as the analysis of the weekly indicators are in progress and will be published on Monday (Nov. 9)," the national public health agency said on its website.

French media reported that data on infections have been incomplete for several days, due to a computer traffic jam that hampered the reporting of test results.

Coronavirus infections have surged sharply in France in recent months particularly among young people, prompting the government to introduce a new nationwide lockdown on Oct. 30 until early December.

As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, countries including France, China, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States are racing to find a vaccine.

According to the website of the World Health Organization, as of Nov 3, there were 202 COVID-19 candidate vaccines being developed worldwide, and 47 of them were in clinical trials.