PARIS (AP) – As the sun went down, their party got underway, with an unwanted guest: the coronavirus.
An outbreak among 18 to 25-year-olds at a seaside resort on the Brittany coast is crystallizing fears that the virus will reignite in France, behind the backs of tourists throwing the COVID-19 caution into the summer winds.
With 72 infections by Wednesday, mainly among that age group, discovered in a week of tracing furious contacts, the group on the Quiberon Peninsula was thought to have originated with a supermarket summer worker who was partying with others in a night place.
It is becoming a textbook case of the virus pitting generations against each other.
The chief regional government official, a former soldier and intelligence officer in his 50s, has not criticized his words, denouncing the “irresponsibility of young people who are on vacation or living here, gathering in large numbers for the night festivities, ignoring the risk. ”
The official, Patrice Faure, prefect of the British Morbihan region, personally delivered a two-month closure order at a Quiberon nightclub, the Hacienda Cafe. Among the nightclubs where people now infected congregated, he circumvented the national nightclub coronavirus ban by becoming a night watering hole, blocking his dance floor with tables and stools.
The owners told the regional newspaper Ouest-France that they urged customers to wear masks, but also noted: “They are young, on vacation or doing summer jobs, and had been drinking. They didn’t listen to me.
Although authorities insist that the outbreak is under control, the peninsula that used to be a sardine fishing center has become a flashpoint for fear France will backtrack on the epidemic that has infected more than 185,000 and killed the less than 30,200 in the country. Infection rates are on the rise and authorities warn that people are ignoring pleas to use common sense as millions feast on the country’s July-August vacation.
In Paris, nurse Damien Vaillant-Foulquier fears that a second wave of infections will derail the plans he and his wife, also a nurse, have made to join the exodus in mid-August. Her hospital, which managed to empty its ICU rooms after weathering the initial wave, is already treating new patients with COVID-19 and asking nurses-in-training if they will be there later in the summer to work, she said.
“In the hospital, we feel the arrival of the second wave,” he said. “I am depressed because I have the impression that people do not see danger and have forgotten why we were locked up at home.”
Recently cycling through the French capital, “I saw that the bars of the great boulevards had become night spots, full inside and out, everyone was dancing, without masks, nothing, absolutely no respect for social distancing,” Vaillant said. -Foulquier.
“Young people are accused of not being responsible, but it is not just young people,” he said.
Romain Arnal, a 20-year-old student, is one of those who has let his hair down, and the guard, in Quiberon. He goes on vacation there every year, and meets a vacation girlfriend he met at the resort three summers ago.
“When we are in smaller groups, with friends, we don’t really pay attention, even if it’s people we just met. We invite each other, without masks, obviously, ”he said.
Concerned about the spike of infection, Arnal says he has gone to a makeshift test station set up in Quiberon. to contain the outbreak, but has been thwarted by long lines. The authorities have urged that everyone be tested, especially those attending the Hacienda party. That is a gigantic task on the peninsula, where the population increases from 5,000 to 60,000 in the summer.
Quiberon has made wearing masks mandatory on some of its busiest streets, joining other vacation cities to go beyond the national mask requirement in all indoor public spaces. And he slapped the nightly curfews on beaches and public parks, worried that symptom-free youth could pass on the coronavirus to the less healthy.
“I hope, or at least imagine, that they don’t have the desire to transmit the virus to their parents, their grandparents, their neighbors, uncles and aunts,” said Faure, the prefect. “It is extremely inappropriate to celebrate today as in 2019.”
Fishing guide Alexandre Lesage, 39, says he feels for the generation he sees trying to enjoy in the same places and beaches where his youth spent, free from the uncertain future that young people facing a labor market now face. the coronavirus crisis.
“They are being treated as plague bearers, as if they were totally irresponsible, when in reality they are young at heart,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.”
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Leicester reported from Le Pecq, France.
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