“Unacceptable”, possibility of “countermeasures” in a logic of retaliation. On Tuesday morning, the Chinese Foreign Ministry officially condemned the decision of a dozen countries to impose a Covid-19 screening test for travelers coming to or returning from China.
Among them, France. A guest of franceinfo, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne reacted immediately to Beijing’s statements. She justified the reinstatement of these sanitary restrictions and guaranteed that they would be maintained.
“We are in our role. My government is in its role of protecting the French,” he insisted. “Passengers boarding a flight from China to France agree to accept a test on arrival and a test that is subject to sequencing if positive,” she replied.
“We want to make sure there is not a new variant”
Elisabeth Borne summed up the spirit of this policy: “Our goal is to monitor the evolution of the epidemic and sequence the virus in order to have a good overview of the epidemic.”
“We want to make sure there is not a new variant,” he further noted. “We are doing this in accordance with the World Health Organization rules and we will continue to do so,” he said.
Italy, Spain or even the United Kingdom… many European countries have opted for a similar system for visitors from China, given the outbreak of contamination after the abandonment of “Covid zero”.
However, last Thursday, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control considered this new mandatory screening campaign “unjustified”. But Elisabeth Borne affirmed that the Europeans were not advancing in a dispersed way in this file: “We made all these decisions after a meeting with the general directors of health of the European countries.”
Source: BFM TV
