If mistrust towards vaccines and opposition to the Health Pass remain current issues, the French continue to get vaccinated in large numbers. A new milestone has been reached, according to Prime Minister Jean Castex’s announcement this Thursday: that of the 40 millionth vaccinated person. This is good news as the human toll worsens day by day.
The announcement is significant at a time when the government continues to face strong criticism for its handling of the pandemic, and resistance to health measures remains intact (though it concerns only a small minority): “40 million French people now have a complete vaccination schedule.”
A few days earlier, Olivier Vรฉran announced that 46 million people had received their first dose, and 80 million injections had been administered since the start of the vaccination campaign.
Despite the rapid progress of vaccination, France remains heavily impacted by the Sars-CoV-2 virus, particularly by the more contagious Delta variant. On August 18, the country unfortunately surpassed 113,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic (113,055), an increase of 112 in 24 hours.
The number of cases is also rising, but the daily increase seems to have stabilized around 30,000. The total number of infected people (confirmed through testing) stands at 6,533,383.
The situation in the rest of the world is similar to that of France: the fourth wave is raging, and more than 600,000 new cases are identified each day. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the milestone of 210 million is expected to be surpassed this Friday.
Deaths are also increasing: between 5,000 and 10,000 people die every day from the consequences of Covid-19. A total of 4.392 million people have died from the disease since it first appeared.
