France enforces new mask measures as it deals with 500 coronavirus clusters

• On Monday, France made face masks compulsory in all public indoor spaces to avoid further spread of the coronavirus.
• French health minister Olivier Veran said while there was no second wave of cases, there had been a "worrying dynamic" about how COVID-19 was spreading, justifying the new regulation.
• Veran told broadcaster France Info there were between 400 and 500 active clusters that had flared up across the country, and 97 of them were being investigated, according to The Guardian.
• Elina Outh, a 22-year-old student in Paris, told Reuters: "There's no problem in wearing one, I'm completely for it. What's happening makes sense and I think it should have happened a long time ago."

Face masks have been made compulsory in all indoor public spaces in France, as it grapples with up to 500 active coronavirus clusters across the country.

Masks were already required on public transport, but will now be obligatory in public spaces like shops, cinemas, banks, post offices, and supermarkets, to avoid further spread of the coronavirus. Anyone who refuses to wear one will be fined $154.

On Monday, speaking on the new regulation, French health minister Olivier Veran said while there was no second wave of cases, there had been a "worrying dynamic" about how COVID-19 was spreading.

Veran told broadcaster France Info there were between 400 and 500 active clusters that had flared up across the country, and 97 of them were being investigated, according to The Guardian.

"We are seeing worrying signs of new outbreaks of the epidemic in certain places across the country that have led us to 'harden' our position regarding the health message," he said.

Veran said the goal was not to worry people but to keep them on their guard.

President Emmanuel Macron originally announced that face masks would become obligatory in all public spaces on August 1, according to Euro News.

But last week, officials in Mayenne, a region in northwest France, started calling for mandatory mask wearing earlier, as cases began to climb in the region, according to the BBC.

As of July 21, France had 214,023 cases with 30,180 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, making it one of the hardest hit countries in Europe.

On the ground, at least one person didn't mind. Elina Outh, a 22-year-old student in Paris, told Reuters: "There's no problem in wearing one, I'm completely for it. What's happening makes sense and I think it should have happened a long time ago."

Unlike many places in the world, including the US, where enforcing people to wear masks has sparked debate about people's individual freedoms, most people in France are willing to wear a masks to fight the coronavirus, Reuters reported.

France has also been stockpiling hundreds of millions of masks in case of a second wave of cases, the BBC reported.