France will order bars and restaurants shut in Marseille and restrict their opening hours in other cities including Paris as part of efforts to stem a continuing rise in the daily number of infections, Health Minister Olivier Veran announced on Wednesday.

The French government this weekend added another 13 departments to its list of 42 red zones, where the local authorities would have extra powers to curb the spread of coronavirus, news wires reported.

Large parts of Europe on Friday geared up for broad new restrictions to stop the coronavirus as numbers across the continent are steadily on rise, news wires reported. Last week Europe recorded 54,000 infections in a single day, which was a new record.

The EU is right to continue talking to Britain for now, and should not overreact to British tactics that could be aimed at pushing Brussels to break off negotiations over a trade deal, France’s European affairs minister said on Thursday cited by Reuters.

Poland on Wednesday included France in the list of countries with a ban of  passenger flights due to coronavirus rise. At the same time flights to Romania, Albania, Malta and Kosovo will now be allowed, Polish Radio reported.

The German government announced on Monday that laboratories in France and Sweden have confirmed its own findings that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent. Berlin was still waiting for the outcome of a separate evaluation by the OPCW global chemical weapons watchdog.

France recorded 10,561 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, which is a new daily record, health authorities said. The number topped 10,000 for the first time. The latest daily count, surpassing the previous record of 9,843 new infections reported on Thursday, highlights a resurgence of the disease in France.

French police fired tear gas and arrested more than 200 people in Paris on Saturday as “yellow vest” protesters returned to the capital’s streets for the first time since the coronavirus lockdown, news wires reported. The movement began in late 2018 in protest against fuel taxes and economic reform, posing a major challenge to President Emmanuel Macron.

The French government will discuss on Friday whether to impose new, local lockdowns to try to tackle rising Covid-19 while keeping economic and social activities going, news wires reported. President Emmanuel Macron have said he hoped any new measures would not be too restrictive.

France's Europe Minister Clement Beaune and Strasbourg's mayor Jeanne Barseghian on Wednesday expressed regret for the cancelling of next European Parliament's session in the French city over fears for coronavirus spike. In a joint statement French officials call for a "swift return to plenary sessions in Strasbourg".