As of February 8, 2022, the cumulative number of Covid-19-related deaths globally is close to 5.8 million. With more than 2,300 Covid-19 deaths per million people, the United States, Belgium, Italy and UK have recorded the highest number of fatalities, followed by Spain and France (with about 2,000).
At that time, France’s per-million total of Covid-19 deaths was 14% higher than the average for high-income countries (1,740) – but this was not always the case. The difference peaked at 113% on May 1, 2020 and gradually narrowed thereafter (80% in June, 2020; 50% in December, 2020). Once the first wave of the epidemic had passed, that would seem to indicate that France managed the health crisis better than other high-income countries, but without making up for its initial shortcomings.
France did indeed try hard, increasing its health budget by 8% in 2020 (compared to 2019) producing a 30 billion euro deficit for the health sector (20 times higher than 2019).
