France, Italy and Spain all see new pandemic record infection figures
France: Covid-19: more than 90,000 cases in 24 hours in France. This is the highest number of daily cases ever since the start of the epidemic in France.
Thursday, December 23, Public Health France announced that the number of contaminations in twenty-four hours amounted to 91,608 cases in the country, a figure never before reached. Over the past seven days, the average was 61,274 cases. The previous highest number of infections was in early November 2020, at the peak of the second epidemic wave, with 86,852 cases.
Le Monde report (in French)
Italy: Daily record of infections since the beginning of the pandemic. Stable deaths and intensive care. There are 44,595 cases of Covid identified in Italy in the last 24 hours , an absolute record since almost two years ago has exploded the pandemic. Yesterday there were 36,293 cases. The previous record was recorded on November 13, 2020, when 40,902 cases were identified.
The swabs carried out are 901,450, the positivity rate is 4.9%. There are 168 deaths. There are 93 admissions to intensive care in 24 hours, bringing the total number of people admitted to intensive care to 1,023. Net of discharged patients, 13 more patients were hospitalized than yesterday. The number of hospitalized patients with symptoms is also rising, 178 more than yesterday and bringing the total of patients in the Covid wards to 8,722.
Il Giorno report (in Italian)
Spain reaches the record of contagions of covid in a day of the pandemic. The infection by coronavirus reached Tuesday the highest figure in so far pandemic to reach their 49,823 cases in the last day and an increased incidence of 86 points to 695, with occupancy in intensive units progressive increase (15.7%) and against the background of new restrictions to slow down the rapid advance of omicron.
El Periodico report (in Spanish)
UPDATE, 24th December 2021:
Australia reports 9,119 new coronavirus cases, the biggest one-day increase on record
— BNO News (@BNOFeed) December 24, 2021
Prediction: European Covid winter wave of 2021 will be the worst wave of the pandemic so far