It took the gendarmes to evacuate the quays of the Seine in Paris on Sunday, even before the curfew time at 6 p.m.
Before that, the police had started to regulate access to the banks of the Seine by filtering the passages.
Under a sunny blue sky, with restaurants, bars, shopping centers, cinemas and other cultural venues closed, Parisians had no choice but to meet… elsewhere.
The capital does not have a monopoly: Toulouse has closed its quays after they have been taken by storm in recent days.
Jérôme Marty, the boss of the French Union for Free Medicine (UFML-S) union, is upset.
Not for these gatherings, but by the police who whistled the end of the game.
“It's a communication blow!
»Denounces this general practitioner from Haute-Garonne.
"There is no cluster at the global level that has been formed outside, the cluster risks in these cases are low", they say, without calling into question possible "individual contaminations". , "By postilions, to touch it ..."
VIDEO.
In Paris, the police evacuate the crowded quays of the Seine
The gatherings observed on Sunday on the banks of the Seine are not a first.
However, they fall badly while Prime Minister Jean Castex, by unveiling on Thursday a list of 20 departments under "enhanced surveillance", had pointed the finger at the capital.
From the first day of the first deconfinement, May 11, the police had evacuated the edges of the Canal Saint-Martin, stormed by Parisians.
A month later, on June 21, they had gathered there even more for the Fête de la musique.
At the same time, demonstrations had gathered several thousand people around Adama Traoré's sister, Assa Traoré.
So many events which had, a priori, not created clusters or peaks of contamination.
Beautiful days too rare to be effective
So why worry about it in 2021?
"Unlike June 2020, we are not in summer and the levels of contamination are now higher than at the time," reports to Parisian Mircea T. Sofonea, epidemiologist and lecturer at the University of Montpellier (Hérault).
During this period, people live indoors, they do not always open the windows, so the virus, if it is in the air, stays there and this promotes contamination.
"But the profile of the people participating in the gatherings - young people most often, who are only rarely tested - could mask the effect of this type of gathering for several more weeks, notes epidemiologist, even though" the variants circulate more among youth ".
Another problem, around this kind of gatherings observed in Paris: we eat, we drink, we listen to music or play… “There is no mask, there are gatherings with tight people, but above all you have to speak loudly because there is music and noise, so the postilions, sources of contamination, are thrown even further away ”, describes Mircea T. Sofonea.
Individual contaminations, without specifically talking about clusters, could therefore be more numerous.
The balance is once again complicated: the morale of the population versus the health requirement.
"It would take a pressure cooker valve and outdoor gatherings could be," said Jérôme Marty.
And to add: "Let's fight more about what is happening in the apartments rather than attacking what is happening outside, it is more serious and more contaminating!"
"If you have to see a person, it is always better to see them outdoors," explains Mircea T. Sofonea.
But it is not necessary that the beautiful days, when they are limited to one or two days a week, are favorable to see people whom one would not have seen otherwise they become an accelerator.
"
A more harmful time change?
Another thorn could come to plant itself in the side of the government: that of the time change.
Scheduled for the end of the month, it plans to set the watches back one hour.
But under curfew, it's an extra hour without being able to enjoy the sun.
The Citizen's Association for a Fair and Sustainable Hour (ACHED), which is already campaigning for the end of the time change, sounded the alarm at the end of February: “In March already, in Paris, the night will only be complete. 8:00 p.m., which will become 9:00 p.m. on Sunday after the time change.
"Asked by a student on Monday about a possible reduction in the curfew, Emmanuel Macron replied:" We have to hold out for a few more weeks ... four to six weeks.
"
