PARIS (Reuters) - French Health Minister Olivier Veran said on Monday it was too early to claim victory over a resurgence in coronavirus infections, even if recent data showed some encouraging signs.
Veran told reporters that authorities were in the process of gradually regaining control over the epidemic but warned that it was too soon to let up.
"We have not defeated the virus yet, Veran told reporters in Lyon, adding that, that as long as daily infection numbers did not drop significantly and the hospital system remained under pressure, lockdown efforts must continue.
France entered a second nationwide lockdown on Oct. 30, which is set to last at least until early December.
President Emmanuel Macron has said that daily infection numbers must drop back to 5,000 before limits on movement can be relaxed a level not seen since the end of August.
After hitting a peak of 86,852 new infections per day on Nov. 7 - nine days into lockdown - new infections have dropped sharply to an average of 27,786 over the past seven days.
On Saturday, the number of people going into hospital or in intensive care units (ICU) with COVID-19, which had risen virtually without interruption since mid-August, finally fell, by a modest 208, to 32,499.
The number of people in also dropped for the first time in months, by 32 to 4,871.
But on Sunday, hospital numbers jumped again by 582 to 33,081 - still above a peak of 32,292 reached on April 4, during the first lockdown.
The ICU numbers also edged up again, by 25, but remain well below the April 8 high of 7,148.
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Matthieu Protard and Geert De Clercq; Editing by Kevin Liffey)