Covid-19: a test of less than 24 hours now mandatory to go overseas

Be careful if you have to go to an overseas territory soon. A negative PCR or antigen test of less than 24 hours will be mandatory from Tuesday, December 28 for all passengers, vaccinated or not, going to French overseas territories from both mainland and abroad, announced Friday the Ministry of Overseas. “By a decree dated December 24, 2021, all passengers traveling to overseas territories will be required to present a negative test, PCR or antigen, of less than twenty-four hours upon boarding. , he said in a statement.

This obligation will come into force from December 28 and will apply “for travel from France, as from all foreign countries”. Mandatory tests for all travelers, before boarding flights from France to these territories, had already been reinstated on Monday, November 29, facing the arrival of the fifth wave of the epidemic linked to the Delta variant. But the rule varied according to the vaccination status: PCR test of less than 48 hours or antigenic test of less than 72 hours for vaccinated people, less than 24 hours for unvaccinated people.

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Extended state of emergency

Regarding international flights to Overseas Territories, only restrictions “decided locally by the representative of the State or the competent authority” have applied until now. The obligation of a negative test for all trips to the Overseas “is necessary in order to protect the overseas territories from the new epidemic wave under the effect of the Omicron variant”, argues the ministry. The bill transforming the health pass into a vaccine pass, presented to the Council of Ministers on Monday, also plans to extend the state of health emergency until March 31, 2022 in Martinique and to declare it until the same date at The meeting.

It is specified in the text “that in the event of declaration of a state of health emergency in another ultra-marine community before March 1, 2022, this state of emergency will also apply until March 31, 2022” Covid-19 contaminations in France have exceeded 90,000 new cases recorded in 24 hours, a threshold never reached and an absolute record in the country since the start of the epidemic in March 2020, according to figures released Thursday by Public Health France.