French Health Minister Olivier Veran said on Tuesday that new Covid-19 infections were increasing at an unprecedented rate due to the Delta variant after cases hit 18,000 in the last 24 hours, according to Reuters.

Referring to the latest figures while speaking in parliament, he said: “That means we have an increase in the spread of the virus of around 150 per cent in the last week: we've never seen that, neither with Covid (the original form), nor the British variant, nor the South African or the Brazilian one.“