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France becomes 2nd EU country with over 1 mln COVID-19 cases, record daily caseloads haunting Europe

Europe Materials 24 October 2020 04:32 (UTC +04:00)
France becomes 2nd EU country with over 1 mln COVID-19 cases, record daily caseloads haunting Europe

With a record 42,032 new infections confirmed in the last 24 hours, France has counted an accumulative total of 1,041,075 COVID-19 cases as of Friday, becoming the second European Union (EU) country passing the grim one-million mark after Spain, Trend reports citing Xinhua.

Data showed that the spread of coronavirus is on a spiraling trend in Europe. Record daily caseloads are being refreshed more frequently in many European countries amid the second wave of the COVID-19.

On Friday, a slew of European countries reported record new cases, including Poland (13,632), the Netherlands (10,007), Romania (5,028), Portugal (3,270), Hungary (2,066), Denmark (859), and Latvia (250). Some of them -- France and Denmark, for instance -- even hit new highs in two consecutive days.

As of 3:34 p.m. CEST on Friday, two EU countries, namely Spain and France, were among the top 10 countries globally with the most confirmed cases on the dashboard of the World Health Organization (WHO). The United Kingdom ranked the 11th with 810,471 confirmed cases.

While these major European countries grabbed the world's attention with their caseloads, some of their small peers are more worrisome in terms of the incidence rate.

According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), as of Friday, the Czech Republic and Belgium were the only two countries among the EU/EEA and the UK with the 14-day cumulative number of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 above 1,000. The Czech Republic (1148.5) and Belgium (1019.8) are far higher than Spain (379.1) and France (488.6).

ECDC has developed epidemiological criteria to categorize the epidemiological situation in countries as being "of concern" or "of serious concern." Countries whose epidemiological situation does not meet the criteria for being either of them are categorized as having a "stable" situation.

As of Friday, only six European countries, namely Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Liechtenstein and Norway, were categorized as "stable." Still,the agency warned of ongoing transmission among them, saying the situation must be closely monitored.

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