Covid-19 in France: lack of sanitary control at Roissy worries passengers

The largest airport in France is only a shadow of its own, with traffic on Sunday May 3 estimated at 4% of its level on the same date in 2019. But if Charles-de-Gaulles airport is Almost empty, several passengers interviewed by AFP expressed concern about the absence of measures to limit the circulation of the coronavirus.

No thermometer, no contact form to fill out, passports handled without gloves and an "empty, empty, empty" airport: for those travelers arriving or leaving Paris, the journey to Roissy in the midst of a pandemic was disconcerting, sometimes scary.

"It drives me crazy, they take the passports, manipulate them, close them and hand them to us. Next ..." Thomas, whose first name has been changed, is not about to forget his visit to the biggest French airport.

Thomas, who works for a large international institution, was repatriated Thursday evening from Libreville with 380 compatriots on a plane chartered by the French authorities. The first flight in three weeks.

In the device, which is full, Thomas notes that his neighbors are not wearing their masks. A simple operator on this flight, Air France explains that it provides the masks to passengers, and that "the air is filtered and renewed every three minutes".

Masks and gloves not compulsory

Upon arrival in Roissy, desert, "we queue as usual at immigration control," says Thomas. "But above all, the PAF police [border police, editor's note] do not have a mask or gloves".

They are not mandatory, retorts an airport source contacted by AFP, but the police have hydroalcoholic gel in their stalls.

Thomas trembles to be contaminated by interposed passport: "Nobody asked us anything. Neither temperature control, nor which countries we had visited before Gabon, nor even of contact to know where we went once left the airport. "

Three days later, Thomas leaves Paris for New York, where nearly 19,000 people died from the Covid-19. On arrival: "temperature measurement at the exit of the plane, a sheet filled with address, telephone number and seat number on board. And a fortnight's recommendation".

Individual liberties

"No checkpoint, no temperature, no mask at the airport": John Warbo, a Swede who left Paris for Stockholm on Sunday, was also "a little shocked".

Why does Roissy not use thermal imaging cameras like other airports?

Currently tested - on volunteer employees - these cameras are not deployed, due to the lack of authorization from the health authorities, government and the CNIL, the gendarme of personal data, explains an airport source.

Ditto for the other detectors: "some may consider it to be an obstacle to individual freedom when pointing a (thermal) pistol at their foreheads".

As for contact cards, they no longer exist, indicates this source, since confinement has been decreed in many countries, "travelers are no longer supposed to mix with others".

Stickers on the ground for safety distances, Plexiglas installed at the "contact points", disinfection "from the elevator button of the car park to boarding", Roissy airport has implemented many sanitary measures . Even the banners in which passengers deposit their belongings before passing through the security gates cannot be reused.

The "craziest" trip

It was "the craziest trip" by Séverine Pénin. The young woman returned Friday from Rome.

Fewer than ten passengers on the plane, cabin crew who "makes safety demonstrations and then goes from one end to the other of the plane, without reappearing from the flight".

On arrival, "everything was empty, empty, empty. It was strangely glaucous, lunar".

If she had "the impression of having run less risk than going to the supermarket" as she was "alone in the world", Séverine filled in a boarding form with her contact details. "I still have this sheet with me. I was never asked for it."

For people authorized to enter France, Paris does not impose a quarantine when Rome forces everyone to isolate themselves, except for workers who stay less than five days.

In Italy, the second country most affected by the pandemic in the world, the temperature is controlled at the start and at the finish, says an AFP journalist who took an internal flight on April 27. Mask required from the terminal, and a certificate is to be given to the police, when getting on and off the plane.

With AFP

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