Few restaurants break coronavirus measures

Few restaurants were found to violate the coronavirus restrictive measures while most of the restaurants and bars followed the authorities’ instructions accordingly, said the National Board of Police in a press release on Friday.

The police inspected about 26,00 restaurants after the Covid-19 regulations came into force on 8 March and found very little to remark, said National Police Board Chief Superintendent Ari Järvenpää.

Certain restaurants may have been inspected several times.

“The number of minor violations recorded by the police is about a dozen. Only one restaurant was the object of a report,” said Järvenpää.

Most of the violations took place in takeaway places, with the customers remaining inside to eat their meals, or staying too close to the premises or on an outside covered terrace.

Two restaurants had customers inside and one of them had no Covid-19 instructions whatsoever visible to the customers.

The policing measures mostly included notices whereby extra persons were asked to leave the premises and the restaurant operator was given a verbal admonition.

In one case, the police filed a report and made a subsequent check in the same place.

The government on 8 March imposed a state of emergency against the backdrop of the worsening coronavirus situation of the country. Following the legal procedure, cafes, bars, restaurants, and nightclubs will remain closed for three weeks until 28 March in the accelerating and community transmission phase of the pandemic.