France’s coronavirus death toll rises by 600 in past day

4 April 2020 11:58 (UTC+04:00)

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Nearly 600 patients have died from complications caused by the coronavirus in French hospitals in the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll to more than 5,000, France's Director General of Health Jerome Salomon said at a news conference on Friday, Trend reports citing TASS.

"Since March 1, as many as 5,091 people have died from coronavirus in hospitals. Of those, 588 passed away in the past 24 hours," he said.

Salomon added that "to date, 27,432 people have been treated in hospitals. Of those, more than 6,000 patients are in intensive care units."

The official informed that "the French health ministry was closely following the situation at care homes." "More than 3,000 institutions have already reported coronavirus cases," Salomon added.

In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus — named COVID-19 by the WHO — have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia.

On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. To date, more than 1,000,000 people have been infected worldwide and over 53,000 deaths have been reported. That said, over 213,000 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.

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