Paris, Nov 28 (IANS): As of Friday, 51,914 people have died of coronavirus in France, with 957 new fatalities registered in the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, Covid-19-associated hospitalisations continued their week-long decline, the country's health authorities said.

France's hospitals reported 393 deaths, and the remaining 564 fatalities occurred in nursing homes, the Xinhua news agency reported.

The total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases was 21,96,119. Friday's reported increase was 12,459, against Thursday's 13,563, but above the 5,000 threshold which the government has set for lifting the lockdown on December 15.

Of all those infected, 28,648 patients are hospitalized with symptoms, down by 662. The number of patients in intensive care decreased by 135 to 3,883, maintaining the downward trend for nearly two weeks.

As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, countries including France, China, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States are racing to find a vaccine.

According to the website of the World Health Organization, as of November 12, there were 212 Covid-19 candidate vaccines being developed worldwide, and 48 of them were in clinical trials.