All passengers from China – by direct flight or with a stopover – will have to present a negative test result of less than forty -eight hours before departure to be able to embark. Port of the mask will be compulsory during the flight.
by Stéphane Mandard
After Italy and Spain, France decided in turn to strengthen border control measures for passengers from China, in order to cope with the risks linked to the explosion of COVID cases -19 in the country since the “zero covid” strategy is stopped. The government announced, Friday, December 30, the implementation of three measures to “protect the French” against the risks of emergence of new variants.
All passengers from China – by direct flight or via a stopover – will have to present a COVVI -19 (PCR or antigenic) test negative less than forty -eight hours before departure to be able to board; Wearing the mask will be compulsory during flight; And from the 1 er January, on arrival on French territory, PCR tests will be randomly practiced on passengers for the only purposes of epidemiological monitoring. The samples which would prove to be positive will be systematically sequenced to identify the appearance of possible new variants, as recommended by epidemiologists.
A decree specifying the terms of these control measures must be published on Saturday. Furthermore, the government calls on the French to postpone thefts to China outside of imperious reasons. According to the Ministry of Health, the epidemic situation in China is considered “serious” sufficiently to justify these measures. The executive notably mentions an “significant risk of intense circulation of the virus” with the “massive flows” which will accompany the celebrations of the Chinese New Year then the reopening of the borders from January 8. The Ministry of Transport is expecting a resumption of flights to France in the coming days. Until now, the flows were limited to a dozen rotations per week, representing around 3000 passengers, all for Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport.
Thursday, the European Union had not reached an agreement to adopt a common strategy. The government always says it is favorable to a “concerted” European approach but ensures that it was necessary to “take measures to protect the French without waiting for a European decision”. The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control had said that the introduction of compulsory COVVI-19 screening within the European Union for travelers arriving from China was “unjustified”, believing that countries Europeans had “relatively high immunity and vaccination levels” and that “the variants circulating in China already circulated in the European Union”.
In contrast, the director of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had considered “understandable that countries take the measures of which they think they will protect their populations” because of “the absence of ‘Complete information from China “. Overwhelmed, the Chinese authorities have ceased to provide official statistics. We talk about the astronomical figure of 37 million contaminations per day.