PARIS (Reuters) – France has decided to strengthen its health measures at the borders for passengers arriving from China, where the end of the zero Covid policy represents a “significant risk of intense circulation” of the coronavirus in the coming weeks, announces the government on Friday.
Among these measures, which will be the subject of a decree by Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne over the weekend, all passengers arriving from China, by direct flight or with a stopover, must present the negative result when boarding. a PCR or antigenic test for the detection of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus carried out less than 48 hours before departure, specifies a press release from the Ministries of Health and Transport.
Random PCR tests will also be carried out from January 1 on the arrival on French territory of travelers coming from China. Sequencing, aimed at determining the presence of any new variants, will be carried out in the event of a positive test. The passengers, for their part, will have agreed beforehand to isolate themselves.
Wearing a mask will finally be made compulsory on planes from China.
Today there are about ten direct flights from China with 300 people on board per week, or around 3,000 weekly arrivals, according to the government.
France thus joins countries such as Italy, Spain, the United States, Japan and India which have decided in recent days to restore health controls in the face of the next reopening of China despite the explosion of cases of COVID-19. Beijing authorities denounce “discriminatory” measures.
The government adds that it wants to continue discussions within the European Union, which is divided on the subject, several member states deeming these new restrictions superfluous, “in order to coordinate measures for the prevention and monitoring of the COVID-19 epidemic”.
Several French experts estimated Thursday that the recent lifting of health restrictions in China, at the origin of an explosion of contaminations by SARS-CoV-2 raising fears of the emergence of new variants, did not justify restoring controls to the borders.
But at the Ministry of Health, we explain that we have taken into account the particular situation of China, a densely populated country where natural immunity remains weak and vaccine immunity “questions”, with, in addition, the prospect of significant population movements. with the Lunar New Year.
“We have no evidence to speak of a new variant of particular concern, but we have risk factors that this very atypical situation is a factor of contamination”, we say at the Ministry of Health.
(Written by Jean-Stéphane Brosse)