Why are Covid-19 cases surging in France?

Channel 4 News shows that in France the numbers of patients admitted to hospital intensive care units with Covid-19 have now reached levels last seen in November. Leading epidemiologist Dr Catherine Hill explains if the situation would be better if France had more vaccine doses.

France is a country primarily located in Western Europe, consisting of metropolitan France and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. France borders Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany to the northeast, Switzerland, Monaco and Italy to the east, Andorra and Spain to the south, as well as the Netherlands, Suriname and Brazil in the Americas. The country's 18 integral regions (5 of which are situated overseas) span a combined area of 643,801 km squared. The total population is 67.4 million (as of February 2021). France is a unitary semi-presidential republic. The capital city of France is Paris (the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre). Other French major urban areas include Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lille and Nice.

Coronavirus Covid-19 Cases overview:

France:

Total cases: 3.96M

Deaths: 89,565

Worldwide:

Total cases: 118M

Deaths: 2.63M

The COVID-19 pandemic in France is part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The dangerous virus was confirmed to have reached France on 24 January 2020, when the first COVID-19 case in both Europe and France was identified in Bordeaux. The first 5 confirmed cases were all individuals who had recently arrived from China.

As of 13 March 2020, when the number of new cases became greater than those in China, the World Health Organization (WHO) began to consider Europe the active center of the COVID-19 pandemic. Coronavirus Cases by country across Europe had doubled over periods of typically 3 to 4 days, with some countries (mostly those at earlier stages of detection) showing doubling every 2 days.