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'Never seen this before': Britain, France & Spain witness surge in COVID-19 cases

WION Web Team
ParisUpdated: Jul 20, 2021, 09:28 PM IST
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Photograph:(AFP)

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Spain and France experienced a surge in coronavirus cases as Britain imposed a 10-day quarantine for people returning from France

As Britain removed major coronavirus restrictions on Monday, the country reported 46,558 new cases of COVID-19 cases with cases rising over a seven day period by over 40 per cent.

French health minister Olivier Veran said the coronavirus cases had surged by "150 per cent over a week" while adding that it never rose so fast in with the Alpha variant, Beta nor Gamma variants.

Veran targeted  40 million people to receive the vaccine by the end of the month as the virus continued to spread in the country.

"I had spoken of the risk of reaching 15,000 to 20,000 cases per day at the end of the month of July, yesterday(Monday) there were 18,000 new infections in only 24 hours," the health minister said, adding, "We have never seen this before."

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On Sunday, France had reported 12,500 new coronavirus cases with the total COVID-19 cases rising to 5.87 million as protesters took to the streets against President Macron's plans to make vaccination mandatory for health workers and COVID-19 free certificate requirement proposal to enter restaurants.

The country has been hit hard due to the Delta variant which authorities said was more contagious than the previous strains even as vaccination has picked up in the country.

France has vaccinated over 55 per cent of the population with a single dose with over 44 per cent fully protected as unvaccinated travellers entering the country were put under restrictions.

Citizens from UK, Portugal, Cyprus, Netherlands, Greece and Spain were required to present negative COVID-19 tests 24 hours before arriving in the country. 

The authorities have imposed even stricter measures for "red list" countries with people belonging to Cuba, Indonesia, Mozambique, Tunisia and other countries required to quarantine for 10 days after arrival including a test result to show negative COVID-19 test result.

Meanwhile, Britain imposed a 10-day quarantine for people returning from France due to the Beta coronavirus variant.

Another European nation Spain which was hit hard due to the virus reported over 61,628 fresh coronavirus cases as visitors flocked to the country's beaches.

Germany and France have advised citizens against travelling to Spain with some regions reimposing curfew as the rolling 14-day infection rate rose to 600 per 100,000 people on Monday.

(With inputs from Agencies)