France heads toward third lockdown as COVID-19 cases spike

Yahoo Finance's Akiko Fujita breaks down the top stories around the world.

Video transcript

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AKIKO FUJITA: In our worldview today, France is bracing for a third national lockdown as the country struggles to control coronavirus infections. French President Emmanuel Macron is set to lay out the latest restrictions in a primetime speech in just a few hours. Daily new infections in the country have doubled to nearly 40,000 since February.

While ICU patients have surpassed the peak hospitals reached during the fall lockdown, just 12% of the population has been vaccinated so far. A nightly curfew is already in effect, as well as non-essential businesses being asked to close. Parliament is expected to vote on Macron's new proposal tomorrow.

China is pushing against allegations it's with-- it withheld data from the World Health Organization and stifled an investigation into the origin of COVID-19. The US and 13 other countries issued a statement Tuesday, saying, the WHO's report was, quote, "significantly delayed and lacked access to complete data and samples."

But the Chinese lead on that report says experts were provided data, adding it was impractical to present original records and specimens. The report released yesterday found that the virus most likely jumped from animals to humans. It downplayed the likelihood of a lab leak.

And the US State Department has ordered all non-essential staff to evacuate Myanmar as violence escalates in the country. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called the crackdown against protesters, increasingly disturbing and even horrifying. Myanmar's military and police have killed more than 500 people since the coup in February. The UN Security Council is holding a closed-door meeting today to discuss its response to the escalating violence.