France reports ‘dizzying’ daily record of 208,000 COVID cases

France is seeing a “tsunami” of COVID-19 infections, with 208,000 cases reported during the past 24 hours on Wednesday, a new national and European record, Health Minister Olivier Veran has told lawmakers. France has been breaking infection records repeatedly during the past few days, with Tuesday’s 180,000 cases already the highest for a country in Europe, according to data on Covidtracker.fr. “This means that 24 hours a day, day and night, every second in our country, two French people are diagnosed positive,” Veran said. “We have never experienced such a situation,” he said, describing the increase in cases as “dizzying”. Global COVID-19 infections have hit record highs during the past seven days, data from the Reuters and AFP news agencies showed on Wednesday, as the new Omicron variant spreads rapidly, keeping many workers at home and overwhelming testing centres.