Repeated violations of the rules. More than 2 million violations related to Covid-19 were recorded during the state of health emergency between March 2020 and July 2022, the ministerial statistics service for internal security announced this Friday, November 22, in a statement.
In detail, 2,696,700 violations were recorded between March 23, 2020 and July 30, 2022, during which three different periods of confinement occurred.
According to the study carried out by the ministry, the number of offenses recorded is particularly high during the period of the first lockdown, with nearly 670,000 in April 2020 alone. In comparison, during the second lockdown, in November 2020, 250,000 crimes were committed . recorded.
However, the measures were stricter during the first confinement, with most trips outside the home prohibited, except for medical or professional emergencies.
Crimes mainly related to travel
Regarding the type of violations, the Ministry of the Interior indicates that the vast majority (79%) refers to non-compliance with rules related to transportation and travel in general. A little more than one in ten (14%) refers to the lack of use of a mask.
After a year in 2020 in which the pandemic was at its highest point, and marked by two confinements, travel restrictions are easing.
Thus, as expected, between 2020 and 2022, the proportion of violations related to transport decreased, from 90% to 55%. On the contrary, the proportion of non-compliance with the use of a mask increased, from 7% to 31%.
Mainly fourth class fines.
Almost all (99%) of these violations were fines and the vast majority (98%) were fourth class fines, normally punishable by a fine of 135 euros.
Much less frequently, more than 50,000 fifth class fines have been recorded. In almost half of the cases these were prohibited meetings.
In addition to the fines, more than 7,000 violations were recorded. These were generally repeated violations, committed on at least three occasions. The perpetrators of these crimes were overwhelmingly men between 18 and 29 years old.
Urban residents especially concerned
According to the study’s conclusions, crimes are most frequently recorded in large cities: the Paris metropolitan area alone accounts for more than half (54%) of crimes. The study does not say whether urban residents respected the introduced measures less than rural residents or whether police checks were more frequent in large cities.
Paris is the department where the number of crimes per capita is highest, with 116 crimes per 1,000 inhabitants, followed by Seine-Saint-Denis with 80 per 1,000 and Guyana, with 76 per 1,000.
Please note that numerous violations have been recorded in the department of Pyrénées-Orientales, with 75 violations per 1,000 inhabitants. Its geographical location, on the border between Spain and Andorra, probably explains this high number of infringements.
The vaccination campaign against Covid, whose virus continues to circulate although it continues to decline, began in mid-October in France and is scheduled until the end of January 2025.
Source: BFM TV
