French new COVID cases jump nearly 20% week-on-week

New COVID-19 cases in France jumped 18% to 6,127 compared to a week ago after rising 8% on Wednesday, health ministry data showed on Thursday.

New cases had already spiked last week - after falling continuously from more than 28,000 per day on August 17 - but that was at least partially in response to the fact that free COVID-19 testing ended last week Thursday, which encouraged more people to take a test before the deadline.

After a 36% spike following the last day of free testing, new case numbers slowed down again on Sunday and Monday, but then picked up again from Tuesday.

The total cumulative new cases now stand at 7.1 million.

Hospital data - whose trend usually lags new case data by one to two weeks - continued improving with the number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care falling by another 17 to 1,009.

France also registered 37 new deaths from the epidemic, taking the total to 117,389.