French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday said the next few weeks would be difficult as the country headed into subdued New Year celebrations after registering 232,200 new COVID-19 cases over the last 24 hours, its highest-ever recorded total. “The weeks to come will be difficult, we all know that”, Macron said in a broadcast New Year’s Eve address. New infections over the last 24 hours were above 200,000 for the third day running, making France one of the epicentres as a wave of infections linked to the Omicron variant sweeps across Europe. Infections in France, one of the countries carrying out widespread testing, stood well above the tally recorded in Italy and Britain, which also reported new records on Friday, with 144,243 and 106,122 cases respectively. […]