PARIS (REUTERS, XINHUA) - France reported on Saturday (April 3) that 5,273 people were in intensive care units (ICU) for Covid-19, a rise of 19 from the previous day, as the country entered its third national lockdown to help combat the pandemic.
The government had been trying to keep the lid on new Covid-19 cases with curfews and regional measures but from Saturday, and for the next four weeks, schools and non-essential businesses across the country will remain shut.
The rise in ICU patients on Saturday followed a much bigger jump the day before - the highest in five months, at 145.
President Emmanuel Macron has pledged more hospital beds to care for critically ill Covid-19 patients.
Mr Macron had hoped to steer France out of the pandemic without having to impose a third national lockdown that would further batter an economy still reeling from last year's slump.
But new strains of the virus have swept across France and much of Europe, amid a slower roll-out of anti-coronavirus vaccines in the European Union than in some countries including Britain and the United States.
France reported 213 new Covid-19 deaths on Saturday, bringing the toll to 96,493 since the start of the pandemic, according to data from the health ministry. The number of new infections is still under calculation, the ministry noted.
As of Saturday, 9.24 million people in France, or 17.6 per cent of the adult population, have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, and 3.11 million have received two injections, according to the health ministry.
According to an Ifop poll of 1,021 people carried out online on April 1 and published on Sunday in Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper, a majority of French people expressed misgivings over the government's handling of the pandemic.
Fifty-eight per cent of people said they did not trust the vaccination campaign would be carried out according to plan.
However, a majority of people, 51 per cent, said they did plan to get a Covid-19 vaccine, with only 34 per cent saying they would not.
Another 15 per cent said they had already been inoculated.
Mr Macron has vowed to speed up France's vaccination campaign, and the defence ministry said late on Saturday that seven military hospitals would be mobilised from April 6 to administer doses.
France has approved the use of vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca.
