France will extend a national lockdown until April 15 after reporting its biggest daily death toll from coronavirus, its prime minister said on Friday, and officials warned that hospitals around Paris could be overwhelmed in 48 hours.
“At the end of these first 10 days of confinement it is clear that we are only at the beginning of the epidemic wave,” Edouard Philippe told reporters after a cabinet meeting. “It has overwhelmed the East and is now arriving in the Ile-de-France and the Hauts de France .”
The capital and its suburbs now account for over a quarter of the 29,000 confirmed coronavirus infections in French hospitals, with almost 1,300 now in intensive care.16-YEAR-OLD VICTIM Officials in the Paris region have been scrambling to locate more intensive care beds, ventilators and medical staff and spread the load of patients across the capital and its broad girdle of suburbs.
Medical staff, wearing protective suits and face masks, wait for the patients to arrive for medical consultations at an emergency COVID-19 center inside a gymnasium in Taverny near Paris as the spread of the coronavirus disease continues in France, March 26, 2020. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes “If we let hospitals cope by themselves, and let every territory that has been taken by the epidemic cope alone, then we shall head toward a catastrophe,” Valletoux said.
Isolation centers were being set up across Paris to allow people with symptoms to be assessed to avoid cramming hospitals.
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