From Iceland — Unusual Number Of Reports Violating Disease Control Measures, Says Police Chief

Unusual Number Of Reports Violating Disease Control Measures, Says Police Chief

Published March 8, 2021

Photo by
Vísir/Vilhelm

Víðir Reynisson, chief police officer at the National Commissioner of Police’s Civil Protection Department, says that people have relaxed too much over the weekend.

The police received an unusual amount of reports about possible violations of control measures.

In an interview with Fréttablaðið, the chief said “The vast majority of them are of the kind that they may not be considered a quarantine but rather more about people’s behaviour.”

These rules are not meant to be broken

Many of the violations were supposedly made up of small offenses such as people queuing too closely, too many people being close together and people not wearing masks.

Víðir believes that people are started to relax more than they should have over the weekend.

He also thinks that the news of infection over the weekend means that more and more people are starting to report violations.

If there was a group infection, it happened over the weekend

Two individuals were diagnosed with the British variant of COVID-19 over the weekend, both outside of quarantine.

This is the first time an infection has been detected outside of quarantine since the 1st of February.

Víðir stated that if there is a group infection, it is already happening. “It is obvious that one is worried that if these infections become something more than they already are, then we could be looking at getting a group infection,” says the chief.

No one was diagnosed with the virus domestically yesterday, but it is expected that up to 2000 people will be screened for the virus today in connection with the weekend’s infection.

The chief closed the interview by saying “If people have relaxed a lot over the weekend and this turns into some kind of group infection, then it will be something that happened in the last few days.

Now people just have to work hard for the next few days while we see what comes out of this, whether something has started in the community.”

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