QUIBERON, France (Reuters) – The Hacienda Bar at this French beach hotel is full of revelers on Saturday nights: a crowd of people, beer glasses and smartphones in hand, moving to the sound of pop and hip-hop music like red and blue strobe lights flashed accessories.
Scenes at the bar in northwestern France in mid-July were captured with cell phone images. Reuters was unable to independently determine the video, however, fitness officials said that that night’s dance violated hygiene rules and that a user described it as too complete.
One of them provides a 19-year-old student who worked during the summer at the bakery counter of a supermarket.
He had a headache and left early. Three days later, on July 21, the student diagnosed COVID-19.
In the following days, dozens of his friends, many of whom were regulars of the Treasury, took the test. Array Public fitness officials said Wednesday that they traced 72 cases to the student and his circle of friends.
The public fitness government closed the bar, closed the beach at about 9 p.m. each and every night, release a massive test crusade and ask other young people to curb their socialization.
“They need to have fun,” said Patrice Faure, the region’s prefect who ordered the Treasury to close for two months when touch trackers connected the COVID-19 boxes to the bar.
The Treasury epidemic is a phenomenon that is being repeated across Europe.
After COVID-19 infection rates have been reduced during months of strict blockage, hot spots of infection begin to appear.
Many of the groups, from Barcelona in northern France and Germany, were in holiday spots that pleased young people who let their hair down during the summer.
Faced with a resurgence of new coronaviruses, the Spanish regions have imposed a patchwork on nightlife, ranging from socially remote dance floors to curfews and attendance limits.
Catalonia, the home of Barcelona’s most famous nightclubs, closed last week, ordered bars in dozens of municipalities to close and imposed fines of up to 15,000 euros for young people attending open-air bottle parties.
Although the number of nightclub-related outbreaks is small, the Spanish government must take strong action against the festivities because the number of cases related to each of the epidemics is high.
Data from Thursday’s Ministry of Health showed that 30 nightlife-like active groups accounted for 1,100 cases, while family gathering circles were to blame for 90 groups, but only 770 infections.
In Germany, towns and police seek to fight parties in parks and public squares, because dancing in nightclubs and giant public gatherings remains illegal in many places.
The city-state of Hamburg has banned the sale of alcohol in department stores and kiosks after 8 p.m. to the dense crowds of revelers in the streets.
In Frankfurt, Germany’s currency capital, another 39 people were arrested after nightly clashes with police before this month, and in Berlin, police dispersed an illegal rave involving some 3,000 people in a public park last weekend.
The phenomenon has raised fears that a wave of the disease will be on European and harm an already fragile economic recovery.
In the week leading up to his illness, the 19-year-old at the center of the epidemic in Quiberon on the estate each and every night. Earlier in the week, there weren’t many people, but Saturday was crowded.
“There were too many people,” said the student, who asked to be known because he feared being stigmatized for his role in the epidemic.
Early Saturday, he had a headache, which he attributed to a migraine. He took acetaminophen and went to the bar, but said he was gone before midnight. On Monday, still uncomfortable, he went to his doctor, who referred him to the hospital.
He tried COVID and got a positive result on Tuesday morning. Public fitness officials quarantined him in an apartment.
The student told Reuters that he had tried to respect fitness standards by socializing with the same organization of others during his stay in Quiberon.
Faure, the prefect, said the Treasury illegally runs a nightclub, banned under COVID restrictions.
Eric Adami, the bar manager, said he thought he wasn’t doing anything wrong and that The other Bars in Quiberon worked the same way, but that they were being punished.
“They gave us a catch,” he said in a brief phone interview. “My morale is at zero.”
In France, the daily number of new cases shown of COVID-19 is at its highest since May, still well below the peak of the virus.
The greatest accumulation in new cases occurs among other people over the age of 15 to four and four years. Six weeks ago, four out of every 100,000 people in this category were infected; now it’s double.
The number of other people severely or dying continues to decline. Other young people are less likely to have severe symptoms.
However, other young people, if they do not adhere to the social estrangement recommendation, may simply inflame and infect older and more vulnerable parents, according to public fitness officials.
“One of the demanding situations we face is convincing other young people of this risk,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference in Geneva this week.
“We have already said it and we will do it again: the other young people are not invincible. Other young people can become infected; the other young people would possibly die; and other young people can transmit the virus to others.”
The guy in the middle of the Treasury group broke out of his 40 years earlier this week.
On Tuesday night, he was in the trailer where he spent the summer, dressed in a mask, shorts and a T-shirt. He picked up his things before moving in for a week with his parents, in a city 150 km away.
He said he later sought to move out of Quiberon where, he said, he and his friends were being unfairly blamed for the epidemic even though they did not break any laws.
Recalling Saturday night when he went to the Treasury with symptoms of what later turned out to be COVID-19, he said, “I didn’t need to hurt, I was just looking to live a little.”
Additional reports by Nathan Allen in Madrid, John Irish in Paris, Maria Sheahan in Berlin and Stephanie Ulmer-Nebehay in Geneva; Writing through Christian Lowe; Edited through Mike Collett-White
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