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COVID-19

French police bust 100 illegal diners at underground Paris restaurant

Paris police fined over 100 diners late Friday at an underground restaurant flouting coronavirus restrictions and arrested its organiser, after a week of allegations that ministers attended similar rule-breaking events.

Published: 10 April 2021 13:37 CEST
Updated: 10 April 2021 15:38 CEST
French police bust 100 illegal diners at underground Paris restaurant
The outside of Palais Vivienne apartment, owned by French collector Pierre-Jean Chalencon. Credit: THOMAS COEX / AFP

Officers were “called out for an excessive noise complaint about a restaurant” and “put an end to a gathering of over 110 people,” the French capital’s police posted on Twitter.

“Guests fined for failing to respect applicable health measures. Organiser and manager arrested,” they added.

Underground restaurants offering wealthy people a pre-coronavirus dining experience have made headlines in France throughout this week.

The M6 private television channel last week broadcast a reportage based on footage recorded with a hidden camera purportedly from a clandestine restaurant in a high-end area of Paris where neither the staff nor the diners were wearing masks.

Participants were shown enjoying caviar and champagne at the event costing €220 per person.

All restaurants and cafes have been closed in France for eating-in for the last five months. The country this week began a new limited nationwide lockdown to deal with surging Covid-19 infections.

One of the organisers of the dinner shown by M6, businessman and collector Pierre-Jean-Chalencon, was briefly detained for questioning by police Friday alongside chef Christophe Leroy.

Chalencon had claimed to have held several dinners at his luxury Palais Vivienne venue in central Paris attended by ministers.

“At this stage of the investigation, there is no evidence that indicates any members of the government took part in the dinners being investigated,” prosecutors said after interviewing him.

Member comments

  1. This is based on what was known a year ago. I believe the situation is worse now. If you catch flu you may pass it on and infect up to 14 people when taken to 10 iterations. When you catch Covid 19 (and not the newer more contageous version) you can infect up to 59,000 people when taken to 10 iterations, some of whom are bound to die. As these diners are by implication wealthy and careless I hope they are fined to a level to refelct the financial cost to society, though nothing can reflect the emotional cost to those few and their familes who require hospital treatment. I don’t know how much one person’s medical costs, costs the national budget; €10-20k?, (4 days in hospital for tests cost me €9000) so suppose 10 of the 59,000 require hospital treatment. A fine of at least €100,000 would not be an unreasonable contribution to reimburse us the costs we have to bear for their selfish, inconsiderate, flagrant disregard of other’s lives.

    At the time, March 2020, Intensive care specialist Professor Hugh Montgomery noted that “If you are irresponsible enough to think that you don’t mind if you get the flu, remember it’s not about you, it’s about everybody else,” It still holds true, I beleive.

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HEALTH

France’s Covid-19 app to be ‘put to sleep’

France's Covid-tracker app, used for months for the all-important 'health pass' will be switched off today, health officials have confirmed.

Published: 30 June 2023 13:29 CEST
France’s Covid-19 app to be 'put to sleep'

Covid-19 screening in France reaches an important milestone on Friday, June 30th, 2023 – when the TousAntiCovid app is officially ‘put to sleep’.

The app, which was launched in June 2020 as France came out of its first lockdown of the pandemic and has undergone a number of iterations, including as a delivery device for the health pass, will be switched off. 

For most people, this anniversary will pass without mention. Few people have consulted the app in recent months, and it has sat dormant on many smartphones since France’s Covid-19 health pass requirement was suspended in March 2022.

Meanwhile, the Système d’Informations de DEPistage (SI-DEP) interface – which has been informing people about their test results since the Spring of 2020 – is also being shut down on June 30th, as per legal requirements.

The SI-DEP shutdown means that it will also be impossible to retrieve Covid test certificates issued before June 30th, should the need arise. All data held by the database will be “destroyed”, officials have said.

It has handled more than 320 million antigen and PCR tests since it was introduced.

This does not mean that testing for Covid-19 has stopped, or is now unnecessary. As reported recently, more than 1,000 deaths a week in Europe are still caused by the virus.

The shutdown of the national information system does not mean that people in France cannot still book an appointment for an antigen test at a pharmacy, or a PCR test at a laboratory. But the number of people going for testing is declining rapidly. In recent days, according to Le Parisien, just 15,000 people in France took a Covid test – the lowest number, it said, since the pandemic started.

Reimbursement rules for testing changed on March 1st, with only certain categories of people – minors, those aged 65 and over, or immunosuppressed patients – covered for the entire cost of testing.

From Friday, only PCR test results will be transmitted to authorities for data purposes, meaning pharmacists that only offer antigen testing will be locked out of the online interface to record test results.

The reason for the shift in priorities is to maintain “minimal epidemiological surveillance”, the Ministry of Health has reportedly told scientists.

As a result test certificates, showing a positive or negative result, will no longer be issued from July 1st. Since February 1st, anyone taking a test has had to give consent to share their data in order to obtain a certificate. 

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