Covid-19: in Toulouse, wearing a mask becomes mandatory throughout the city

This is a first for a large city in France. Wearing a mask will be compulsory from Friday throughout the town of Toulouse, due to the active circulation of the Covid-19, announced on Wednesday August 19, the prefect of Haute-Garonne.

"I decided (...) to extend the wearing of the mask throughout the city of Toulouse from August 21 at 7 am", said the prefect Étienne Guyot during a conference of hurry. The Pink City, the fourth largest city in France with nearly 500,000 inhabitants, had been relatively unaffected by the wave of contamination in the spring.

# COVID19
By prefectural decree dated August 19, 2020, the @PrefetOccitanie in connection with the mayor of @Toulouse, decided to extend the obligation to wear a mask outside.
Find the decree 👉https: //t.co/Za68bILS96 pic.twitter.com/ZMlgN4UPSF

This obligation is valid for one month, every day from 7 am to 3 am, for "people over 11 years old who move in the open air", including those on bikes or scooters but not for those in "a closed passenger car" except in certain cases of carpooling, he said.

Acceleration of virus circulation

Accompanied by the mayor of Toulouse, Jean-Luc Moudenc, and the head of the Regional Health Agency (ARS) Occitanie, the prefect justified this "important measure" by the fact that we are "on the eve of the end of the holidays ":" Everyone will come home "and" we will again have a very important mixing "of population.

The prefect also specified that the controls will be "adapted" and that "we will not issue fines where few people meet". At the beginning of August, the prefecture had imposed the mask in certain areas along the Garonne where hundreds of people gathered every evening.

The director of ARS Occitanie, Pierre Ricordeau, for his part stressed that "the situation in Toulouse is more worrying" with "a much stronger circulation (of the virus) than in the rest of the department and it has accelerated in the last days". The alert threshold of 50 per 100,000 "has been exceeded" in the Pink City. "It is 64.2 per 100,000 inhabitants over the last week," he continued.

>> To read also: "From useless to compulsory, how the government has changed its discourse on the mask"

"During the last week, we recorded 525 positive cases detected in the department against 410 cases the previous week. The incidence rate has increased. It is currently at 37.5 per 100,000. There is also an increase in positivity rate which is 3.1%. It was 1.7% at the end of July ", according to him.

In the department, "we are also seeing an increase in the number of clusters. As of August 18 and since the beginning of May, we have counted 27 clusters, 14 of which are still in progress. We were only 10 at the end of July". "I approve of this measure, we could not remain without reaction", for his part declared the mayor Les Républicains de Toulouse.

With AFP

The summary of the week France 24 invites you to come back to the news that marked the week

Take international news everywhere with you! Download the France 24 application