PARIS: France recorded the highest number of people in intensive care units (ICU) with COVID-19 since the second lockdown in November and the number of people in hospital with the disease rose by over 600 in a day, the biggest jump in more than four months.

The health ministry reported on Monday that the number of patients in intensive care with COVID-19 increased by 102 to 4,974, more than the 4,919 high of mid-November, although still well below a record of over 7,000 last April.

The number of people in hospital with the virus rose by 610 to a new 2021 high of 28,322 as emergency unit doctors warned that the situation was set to get worse in coming weeks.

France also reported 360 new deaths in hospitals from COVID-19, taking the cumulative death toll since the start of the epidemic to nearly 95,000.

In a statement to a newspaper on Sunday, a group of 41 hospital doctors in the Paris region warned that they might soon have to start choosing between patients for emergency treatment.

Scientists have argued that the government's partial lockdown measures targeting high-infection zones like Paris are inadequate faced with fast-spreading coronavirus variants.