France's national health body warned on Friday of a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in the country, and urged people to continue to get vaccinated to protect themselves against the virus.
The Sante Publique France (SPF) body said that during the week of Sept 5-Sept 11, there had been 186 confirmed COVID cases for every 100,000 people in France - a figure up 12% versus the previous week - representing an average of around 18,000 new cases per day.
Earlier this week, Emer Cooke - the executive director for the European Medicines Agency (EMA) watchdog - told a Reuters Next Newsmaker interview that people in Europe should take whatever COVID-19 booster vaccine is available to them, given expectations of an autumn rise in infections.
New infections have been steadily rising since 10 days and the seven-day moving average of daily new cases reached an almost five-weeks high of 24,042 on Thursday.
(Reporting by Myriam Rivet; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta/Benoit Van Overstraeten)