French COVID-19 intensive care patients at a 12-week high

France’s number of patients treated in intensive care units for COVID-19 has gone up again on Tuesday, reaching a 12-week peak of 3,435 as regional officials urge for a ban on public gatherings and consider a partial weekend lockdown. Unlike some of its neighbours, France has resisted a new national lockdown to control more contagious variants, hoping a curfew in place since Dec. 15 can contain the pandemic. France ended its second national lockdown, which ran from Oct. 30 to Dec. 15. But one of the conditions for switch from lockdown to a national curfew was that the ICU figures remained between 2,500 and 3,000.