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This article explores the problematic of trust relationships among state institutions – especially the prefectural institution – opinion leaders, and civil society as a whole, in the context of the triple crisis of public health, the economy, and society that has been sweeping the country since March 2020. The term “trust [confiance]” is scattered through any number of pieces of legislation and it has been a key word in public debates on COVID-19. We examine how the prefectural institution uses communication as a means of setting up relations of trust, in order to make the population adhere to the public health measures that are to be applied. The relation to institutions has long been conceived in Foucauldian terms, focusing on the effects of social control; our research, drawing on that of Alexis Spire, is concerned with another aspect of state institutions: the “trust that they elicit.” This article takes up the connection to the state in relational terms.