PARIS, Jan 5 (Reuters) - France registered a record number of around 335,000 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, said health minister Olivier Veran, while the number of deaths also rose as the country battles against a fifth wave of the virus.
Veran outlined the figure during a session with the French parliament.
The number of COVID-19 deaths in hospitals rose by 246 to 97,670 in the last 24 hours. The total of COVID patients in hospital intensive care units (ICUs) stood at 3,695 while there were over 20,000 COVID patients in hospital in total, the highest number since late May.
France is backing on ramping up its COVID-19 vaccination programme to avoid having to take any drastic new restrictions to curb the spread of the virus.
French President Emmanuel Macron had said earlier that he wanted to "piss off" unvaccinated people by making their lives so complicated they would end up getting jabbed. He was speaking in an interview with Le Parisien newspaper in which he also called unvaccinated people irresponsible and unworthy of being considered citizens.
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta Editing by GV De Clercq)
