France’s in-hospital coronavirus mortality reaches lowest levels in two months

With 125 new Covid-19 deaths reported in French hospitals on Tuesday evening, the epidemic is taking a similar toll as at the beginning of the nearly two-month confinement imposed in mid-March.

Tuesday evening's tally of 125 deaths in the previous 24-hour period was not the lowest single-day death toll that France's health services have reported in recent weeks.

Inconsistencies in reporting mean the figures appear lower at the weekend before jumping back up as a new workweek begins. 

However, weekly averages – the average number of deaths reported over the previous seven days – absorb fluctuations and shows that in-hospital mortality has steadily declined since its peak in mid-April. 

Tuesday evening's figure puts the weekly average deaths per day at 102, matching the lowest average calculable since the government began posting mortality figures on 17 March, the first day of nationwide confinement to slow the spread of Covid-19.

Death toll revised down due to nursing home correction

France's total Covid-19 death toll as of Tuesday evening stands at 28,022, a lower figure than the previous two days owing to a correction in the reported number of deaths in care homes for the elderly. 

A spike in 429 deaths in care homes was reported Sunday. Tuesday evening's report brought the figure down by 342.

The office of the general director for health, the body that provides the figures, told AFP agency the revision “results from adjustments in the incrise in data coming from regional health agencies”. 

The revision means 10,308 residents of care homes have died of Covid-19, more than a third of the total. 

Number of patients continues to decline

Another 524 confirmed cases were reported on Tuesday evening, slightly higher than the average over the past week of 457.  Well over 4,000 new cases were reported each day at the height of the epidemic in the first week of April. 

The total number of Covid-19 patients in hospital declined by 547 to 18,468, down from their peak of 32,292 on 14 April. The number of patients in intensive care declined by 104 for a total of 1,894, down from a peak of 7,148 on 8 April.