[ News ] Europe's fight against covid-19 goes from hospitals to the streets

[S e u o n g]

At first, the front line of the European fight against the COVID-19 pandemic was fought in hospitals by overloaded health workers. Now that the countries of Europe seek to avoid the much dreaded second wave, that line has moved to the streets and is served by police forces.

In the last week, several European countries registered record rates of infection. Since the spring, countries like France, Germany, Italy and Spain had not seen such a large increase in the number of new cases. Countries like Greece and Croatia, which largely did not see the first wave, saw rapid increases in August as tourists, taking advantage of the reopening of Europe's internal borders in June, headed to the beach for their summer holidays.

 

With authorities determined to avoid a second wave of lockdowns, legislation has been introduced to try to stop the spread of the virus. Nightclubs in Italy and Greece were closed, curfews were enacted in Spain, Italy and Greece, and masks have been made mandatory in an increasing number of public outdoor spaces in most EU countries. : a gradual tightening of regulations that will now have to be in force. The fight against covid-19 has become, in recent weeks in Europe, a matter of public order.

 

Until recently, many of the regulations applied to indoor businesses and were enforced by owners, or to public transportation, where they were enforced by the drivers themselves. Across Europe, there were reports of difficulties in enforcing the rules of masks, from passengers who refused to use them had to disembark from the 'vaporettos', the small boats that transport tourists through the canals of Venice, to the tragic death in France of a bus driver in July, who died after being attacked by passengers who had been asked to put on masks.

Now that the obligations on the use of masks extend into the open air and that their forces are shifted to the police, there is a sense of relief on the part of many of those who had previously been in charge. "We were on the front line," says Damien Cospanza, a bus driver in Marseille, southern France, where the wearing of masks became mandatory throughout the city on Tuesday.

“Unfortunately, people must be afraid. They must be fined so they understand that it is mandatory, especially in a city like Marseille. People don't listen much to a driver, but they do listen to the police.

But if the burden has shifted from drivers and merchants to the police, there is now a question of long-term overload, as regulations tighten and the number of cases continues to grow.

 

 

The police spread out on many fronts:
On Thursday, the French prime minister announced that masks, already mandatory in some parts of Paris, would be mandatory throughout the city. "It is not enough to create new laws, they must also be respected," said Jean Castex. Since August 17, he said, 30,000 police checks have been carried out on businesses, 1,900 fines have been imposed and 53 establishments have been closed.

In Marseille, a tourist center where the obligation to wear an outdoor mask was extended to the entire city on Tuesday, a special team of national police officers was dispatched to help local forces enforce the new rules.