The number of crew members diagnosed with COVID-19 in the Navy is increasing. France's only aircraft carrier, Charles de Gaulle, who took part in the exercise in the Baltic Sea, arrived in Toulon two weeks before it was planned due to the virus.

The French Defence Ministry said 1,767 mariners, nearly all from the Charles de Gaulle itself, had been tested and results showed at least 668 to be infected with the new coronavirus. Results are still not in from a third of the tests. “Thirty-one personnel are today in the hospital,” it said in a statement. “More tests are being carried out.”