covid-19

The official toll of deaths in France from the Covid-19 virus rose to more than 29,000 on Wednesday, when a rise in confirmed cases of infection was also recorded.

French digital affairs minister Cédric O claimed on Wednesday that the launch of a contact-tracing app that warns users if they have come into contact with a person who has tested positive for the Covid-19 virus got off to a 'very, very good start' after it was downloaded around 600,000 times since becoming available the previous afternoon.

Some health workers already doubt that the reforms will live up to the “massive” investment promised by President Emmanuel Macron.

Souleymane Bachir Diagne, a philosopher from Senegal who is currently living and working in the United States, has spoken out about the current global health crisis and the inequalities and prejudice that it has revealed and the outdated thinking it has exposed about Africa. In an interview with Mediapart's Rachida El Azzouzi the academic discusses why so many observers still only discuss the continent through the prism of disease and disaster. Souleymane Bachir Diagne explains that despite many of them having a colonial past, developed countries of the North do not really know modern Africa and the progress it has made in recent decades. He calls on African countries and people to proclaim their achievements to the rest of the world, and talks of the need to 'decolonise' our minds.

The death toll from the coronavirus pandemic rose to 28,132, and the number of confirmed cases increased by 418 to 143,845 on Wednesday, an increase of 0.3%, in line with the average rise per day seen since the end of a lockdown on May 11.

Official figures released on Sunday announced 429 deaths from the Covid-19 virus over the previous 24 hours, mostly recorded in care homes, bringing the total number of recorded deaths in the country from the disease to 28,108, while hospitalisations of patients infected by the coronavirus continued to fall.

Cuts and outsourcing left France scrambling for masks, tests, and even pain pills in its emergency response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In Senegal, the West African former French colony, the fishing industry plays a major social and economic role. While it is a key provider of protein for the population, it is also a major sector for exports, employing around 600,000 people, representing 17% of the country’s labour force.    With the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the dive in air traffic, fish exports have plummeted, while emergency measures imposed to contain the spread of the virus, including a night-time curfew, add further to the crisis. This photo reportage in the port of Hann, one of Senegal’s biggest fish auction sites, situated on the outskirts of the capital Dakar, was led over two days in mid-April, shortly before the start of the Ramadan in this majority Muslim country. The port is normally bustling with activity and a constant toing and froing of ocean-going pirogues, the largest of which can spend weeks trawling the Atlantic. But already, the fishermen and wholesalers were facing a severe downturn in business, when even the most coveted fish, normally reserved for the Asian and European markets, were selling at knock-down prices on local markets.

Key indicators for the French health system's ability to cope with the Covid-19 virus epidemic have shown a downtrend for four to five weeks, with official figures of deaths from the infection over the 24 hours since Friday down by eight at 96,  and a continuing downward trend of hospitalisations – at 19,432 – and those in intensive care, at 2,132 – after respective peaks of more than 32,000 and over 7,000 in mid-April.

The death from a heart attack in Marseille last week of a boy aged nine, who suffered an inflammatory condition with similarities to the blood vessel disorder known as Kawasaki disease, is suspected of having developed the symptoms from Covid-19 virus infection for which he tested positive to, as seen in more than 120 cases of young children in France, but also in other countries,