国际英语新闻:France registers 19,715 new COVID-19 cases, 171 deaths

PARIS, Feb. 7 (Xinhua) -- France on Sunday registered 19,715 new COVID-19 cases, down from 20,586 reported a day before, official data showed.

The country now counts 3,337,048 people who have caught the flu-like disease, of whom 78,965 have died, after reporting a single-day toll of 171, down from 191 on Saturday.

After a slowdown in the number of positive cases for the fourth straight day, the number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized went up again, with 325 new admissions to hospital in one day, bringing those hospitalized to 27,694, including 3,272 serious cases who need life support, up by 47.

As of Feb. 6, over 2.1 million people have been vaccinated, including 247,260 who have completed the two doses of the vaccine, Health Ministry said in its last report.

On Saturday, France received 273,600 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the third of its kind approved in the country after Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna ones.

It will be used for health staff and people with co-morbidities aged under 65, said the ministry.

As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, vaccination is underway in many European countries with the already-authorized coronavirus vaccines.

Meanwhile, 238 candidate vaccines are still being developed worldwide -- 63 of them in clinical trials -- in countries including Germany, China, Russia, Britain and the United States, according to information released by the World Health Organization on Feb. 2.