Virologist Marc Van Ranst is not going overboard about what happened in Ostend on Friday evening. “A disaster,” he wrote on Twitter. he was referring to what happened, when a technical problem prevented trains from leaving, which forced thousands of tourists to stay in the station and on the platforms, side by side, sometimes without a mask.
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On Friday evening, the police had to intervene at Ostend station around 7 p.m. as the crowd crowded into the hall and on the platforms waiting for a train. A technical problem blocked a train and all traffic was disrupted. As a result, the tourists who gradually arrived in the station could no longer leave and ultimately thousands of people were waiting there. Not the ideal situation in the midst of a pandemic.
Marc Van Ranst saw these images shared on social media, which shocked him greatly. “Dear tourists, Ostend has been a disaster today, both on the beach and at the train station,” he wrote on Twitter. “You can forget the coronavirus, but the coronavirus does not forget you.”
For the mayor of Ostend, Bart Tommelein, the day had gone well in the city all day but the wearing of the mask is not respected enough, as he told Het Laatste Nieuws. “I am worried to see people in big cities get on trains and come to our city. I don’t want to keep everyone out of the way, because you can stay in control, but if you’re with groups of young people who don’t want to play by the rules and break the rules as much as possible, then of course you will have problems ”.
He asked his police force to be stricter now so that the wearing of the mouth mask is respected.
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