France tallies 22,086 new cases

The following are the latest developments of the COVID-19 pandemic in European countries, reported Xinhua.

LONDON

The number of people who died within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test in Britain has surpassed 100,000 after another 1,631 have been confirmed, according to official figures released Tuesday.

The total number of coronavirus-related deaths in Britain now stands at 100,162, the data showed.

Britain is the first European nation and the fifth country in the world to pass the grim mark of 100,000 deaths, following the United States, Brazil, India and Mexico.

Another 20,089 people in Britain have tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 3,689,746, according to the official figures.

PARIS

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in France spiked by 22,086 over the past 24 hours and a further 612 patients succumbed to the disease, according to official data released on Tuesday.

The cumulative total of infection cases rose to 3,079,943, and fatalities stood at 74,106, the seventh-highest in the world, the data showed.

A total of 27,041 COVID-19 patients remained hospitalized, including 3,081 serious cases, up by 117 and 40 respectively. The two figures, key gauges to evaluate hospitals' ability to deal with the outbreak, increased for the third day in a row.

As of Tuesday, 1,184,510 people have received the first dose of vaccine against the coronavirus, according to the Health Ministry.

COPENHAGEN

An analysis of positive coronavirus samples shows that Denmark has been experiencing a significant statistical increase in the number of cases involving the more contagious strain of the virus, which was first detected in Britain.

The Statens Serum Institut (SSI) said on Monday that it had registered a total of 632 cases of the new variant in Denmark.

Researchers have found that the variant first appeared in Denmark in the 46th week of 2020 (Nov. 9-Nov. 15), accounting for 0.3 percent of all positive COVID-19 cases. Eleven weeks later, in the third week of 2021, 12.1 percent of the positive samples carried the strain.

"According to the SSI, the variant is spreading in Denmark and will soon be the most common version of coronavirus," Minister of Health Magnus Heunicke said on Twitter on Tuesday.

BRUSSELS

The number of coronavirus infections in children aged between 0 to 9 years has increased by 84 percent in one week in Belgium, Yves van Laethem, inter-federal spokesperson for the fight against COVID-19 in Belgium, told reporters on Tuesday.

This increase is much less marked -- 18 percent -- in adolescents aged between 10 and 19 years, he said.

"Almost one out of five contaminations is currently diagnosed in children or teenagers. This reflects the fact that we currently have a broad screening strategy in place on clusters in schools," he explained.

Several schools are being forced to close due to the increase in cases. But "the current situation in no way justifies changing the strategy," several sources were quoted by the Belgian newspaper Le Soir as saying. "We have five or six schools closed out of 2,500."

To date, Belgium has recorded a total of 694,858 COVID-19 cases and 20,814 deaths.