PARIS health authorities ordered hospitals to activate emergency measures today to cope with fast-rising numbers of Covid-19 patients, who now fill 40 per cent of the region’s intensive-care units.

French Health Minister Olivier Veran was also expected to announce new restrictions for areas where hospitals are facing strain and where infections are mounting, after shutting down bars in Paris and in several other cities and limiting private gatherings in recent weeks.

The director of the Paris region public health agency, Aurelien Rousseau, tweeted today that he had ordered hospital directors to activate a special emergency plan to free up resources and protect medical staff.

The move was necessary, he said, “given the pressure on intensive care units and on conventional hospital activity.”

Each hospital’s emergency plan can include such measures as adding hospital beds, postponing non-urgent surgery, transferring non-Covid-19 patients to other facilities or sending them home, recalling staff from vacation and soliciting help from volunteers.

Such measures were taken in March and April as the pandemic first swept across Europe.

While some regions are seeing infections slow after new virus rules were imposed, French President Emmanuel Macron has pushed for more restrictions in areas where the epidemic is still spreading rapidly.

“We are not in a normal time and we won’t be for several months,” Mr Macron said in a televised address on Wednesday.

France reported a record daily count of 18,700 new confirmed cases on Wednesday and Covid-19 patients now occupy a quarter of ICU beds nationwide.

France has reported 32,445 virus-related deaths since the pandemic began — among the highest tolls in Europe.