French hospitals delay operations to cope with Covid surge

A woman walks past Notre Dame cathedral in Paris (Lewis Joly/AP)

Hospitals in the Paris and Marseille regions of France are delaying some scheduled operations to free up space for Covid-19 patients, as the government tries to stem a rising tide of infections, the health minister said.

As restaurants and bars in Marseille prepared to shut down on Sunday night for a week as part of scattered new French virus restrictions, health minister Olivier Veran insisted that the country was planning no new lockdowns.