France reports nearly 24,000 new Covid-19 cases, 186 deaths in 24 hours

The number of people who tested positive for COVID-19 in France rose by 23,996 in the past 24 hours, according to figures released by the country's Public Health Agency on Saturday.

The daily tally of new cases, down from Friday's 25,207, has brought the cumulative number of infections to 3,736,016. The country's death toll rose by 186 in a 24-hour span to 86,332.

So far, a total of 2,917,925 people in France have been inoculated, of whom 1,560,575 have received the two doses, representing 2.33 percent of the country's population, health authorities' data showed.

France has already received over 7.7 million COVID-19 vaccine doses developed by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca.

As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, vaccination is underway in some countries with the already-authorized coronavirus vaccines.

Meanwhile, 255 candidate vaccines are still being developed worldwide -- 73 of them in clinical trials -- in countries including Germany, China, Russia, Britain, and the United States, according to the latest information released by the World Health Organization.