Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

FEATURE

France mulls suspending all flights from India and imposes 10-day quarantine on arrivals

The French government has extended its quarantine list to include India, making a total of five countries from which all arrivals in France will be subject to a compulsory 10-day quarantine.

Published: 18 April 2021 09:08 CEST
Updated: 22 April 2021 08:28 CEST
France mulls suspending all flights from India and imposes 10-day quarantine on arrivals
Signs showing the heath measures travellers need to take at the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris on March 18th. Photo: ERIC PIERMONT / AFP

Travellers from India will have to undergo a compulsory 10-day quarantine upon their arrival to France or risk fines, government spokesman Gabriel Attal announced on Wednesday.

“For certain countries where the health situation is very serious and worrisome in particular, we will again tighten the screws,” Attal said.

Attal spoke following the weekly Defence Council meeting, where President Emmanuel Macron and selected government ministers discuss what measures, if any, to take to stem the epidemic spread.

The government was considering suspending flights from India, as it did with flights from Brazil, French TV channel BFM reported, based on anonymous sources from the PM’s office. The LCI news channel reported the same, but no flight ban has yet been announced.

India was the fifth country to be added to the list of areas subject to a travel quarantine, a few days after Paris announced a ban on all flights from Brazil to stave off the P1 coronavirus variant, and required quarantines for passengers on flights from Argentina, Chile and South Africa.

Attal said more details on the new travel restrictions would be published soon and that “other countries could be added to the list”. 

Flights from Brazil were suspended until at least Friday (April 23rd) because of concern about the P1 variant of the coronavirus, which is more contagious than the original strain and can also re-infect those who have had the original virus.

Although flights from Argentina, Chile and South Africa will not be suspended, all arrivals from those countries will have to submit to the quarantine or face fines.

Justifying the decision not to ban flights from the other countries, Paris said that those variants had not reached the levels observed in Brazil.

The new quarantine measures will be gradually introduced over the coming days until they are fully enforced by next Saturday, April 24th.

Travel into France from most non-EU countries is already limited, but the new measures will also restrict arrivals from the named countries, mainly to French citizens and their families as well as other EU nationals and people who are permanent residents in France.

Arrivals from French Guyane and the Antilles will also be subjected to tests before and after their flights, said the statement.

READ ALSO:

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

HEALTH

France’s Covid-19 app to be ‘put to sleep’

France's Covid-tracker app, used for months for the all-important 'health pass' will be switched off today, health officials have confirmed.

Published: 30 June 2023 13:29 CEST
France’s Covid-19 app to be 'put to sleep'

Covid-19 screening in France reaches an important milestone on Friday, June 30th, 2023 – when the TousAntiCovid app is officially ‘put to sleep’.

The app, which was launched in June 2020 as France came out of its first lockdown of the pandemic and has undergone a number of iterations, including as a delivery device for the health pass, will be switched off. 

For most people, this anniversary will pass without mention. Few people have consulted the app in recent months, and it has sat dormant on many smartphones since France’s Covid-19 health pass requirement was suspended in March 2022.

Meanwhile, the Système d’Informations de DEPistage (SI-DEP) interface – which has been informing people about their test results since the Spring of 2020 – is also being shut down on June 30th, as per legal requirements.

The SI-DEP shutdown means that it will also be impossible to retrieve Covid test certificates issued before June 30th, should the need arise. All data held by the database will be “destroyed”, officials have said.

It has handled more than 320 million antigen and PCR tests since it was introduced.

This does not mean that testing for Covid-19 has stopped, or is now unnecessary. As reported recently, more than 1,000 deaths a week in Europe are still caused by the virus.

The shutdown of the national information system does not mean that people in France cannot still book an appointment for an antigen test at a pharmacy, or a PCR test at a laboratory. But the number of people going for testing is declining rapidly. In recent days, according to Le Parisien, just 15,000 people in France took a Covid test – the lowest number, it said, since the pandemic started.

Reimbursement rules for testing changed on March 1st, with only certain categories of people – minors, those aged 65 and over, or immunosuppressed patients – covered for the entire cost of testing.

From Friday, only PCR test results will be transmitted to authorities for data purposes, meaning pharmacists that only offer antigen testing will be locked out of the online interface to record test results.

The reason for the shift in priorities is to maintain “minimal epidemiological surveillance”, the Ministry of Health has reportedly told scientists.

As a result test certificates, showing a positive or negative result, will no longer be issued from July 1st. Since February 1st, anyone taking a test has had to give consent to share their data in order to obtain a certificate. 

SHOW COMMENTS