Coronavirus updates: Herd immunity by fall 'ambitious,' says surgeon general nominee

French President Emmanuel Macron announced that all travelers arriving by boat or plane will have to test negative for COVID-19 before entering the country.

The new measure, which goes into effect Sunday, includes visitors from within the European Union as well as those outside the regional bloc. They must take a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test up to three days before departure and provide evidence of a negative result before they travel, according to a statement from Macron's office released late Thursday.

People traveling for essential reasons, such as cross-border or ground transportation workers, will be exempt from the requirement. People arriving from other EU member states by train or car will also be exempt.

France has the sixth-highest tally of diagnosed COVID-19 cases in the world, after the United States, India, Brazil, Russia and the United Kingdom, according to a count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

The European nation of 67 million people confirmed another 22,848 cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, along with an additional 358 fatalities from the disease. That brings the cumulative totals to 2,987,965 cases and 71,998 deaths, according to the latest data from France's public health agency.

ABC News' Ibtissem Guenfoud contributed to this report.

When asked during an interview Friday on CNN's "New Day" about whether the Trump administration's lack of truthfulness in some cases regarding the coronavirus pandemic had cost American lives, Dr. Anthony Fauci said "it very likely did."

"I don't want that, John, to be a soundbite, but I think if you just look at that you can see that when when you're starting to go down paths that are not based on any science at all," Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN's John Berman. "Particularly when you're in the situation of almost being in a crisis with the number of cases and hospitalizations and deaths that we have -- when you start talking about things that make no sense medically and no sense scientifically, that clearly is not helpful."

Fauci, who was a member of former President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force, had disagreed with Trump on how to approach the pandemic. At one point, Trump suggested he was considering firing Fauci.

"There's no secret, we've had a lot of divisiveness," Fauci, who is now the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, told CNN. "We've had facts that were very, very clear that were questioned. People were not trusting what health officials were saying."

The National Football League announced Friday that it's inviting 7,500 vaccinated health care workers to attend the Feb. 7 Super Bowl in Florida “to thank and honor them for their continued extraordinary service during the pandemic.”

Reports that the Japanese government has privately concluded that the upcoming Tokyo Olympics will have to be canceled are "categorically untrue," according to Japan's Cabinet Secretariat of the Headquarters for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

"The renewed schedules and venues for the Tokyo 2020 Games, starting with the Opening Ceremony on July 23 this year, were determined at the IOC Session in July last year. All parties involved are working together to prepare for the successful Games this summer," the cabinet secretariat said in a statement Friday. "We will implement all possible countermeasures against COVID-19 and continue to work closely with the IOC, the Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government in our preparations for holding a safe and secure Games this summer."

The statement follows a report published Thursday evening by British newspaper The Times, which cited "a senior member of the ruling coalition" who said there is agreement that the Games are doomed and the focus now is on securing the event for the Japanese capital in the next available year, 2032.

The 2020 Summer Olympics were supposed to kick off in Tokyo last year on July 24. But in late March, amid mounting calls to delay or cancel the upcoming Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Japan's prime minister announced that the event would be held a year later due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Games are now scheduled to open in Tokyo this summer on July 23, but doubt has surfaced as Japan -- and much of the world -- grapples with a resurgence of COVID-19 infections.

ABC News' Anthony Trotter contributed to this report.