Covid-19: France places Morocco and Algeria on the red list

Unvaccinated passengers from Algeria and Morocco will now have to self-isolate for 10 days upon arrival in France.

AFP - CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT

Text by: RFI Follow

3 min

Algeria and Morocco joined this Friday, August 20, the countries classified on the red list by France.

This list concerns countries in which " 

active circulation of the virus is observed with the presence of variants of concern

 ".

Unvaccinated people returning from these two countries will have to present a compelling reason, a PCR test of less than 48 hours and will have to isolate themselves for ten days. 

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Morocco and Algeria are facing a third wave of Covid-19 stronger than the previous ones.

Particularly in Morocco, where the number of new infections fell slightly this week but still remains high with just under 10,000 new infections daily.

The third most bereaved country in Africa with over 11,400 deaths, just behind Tunisia and South Africa, still records an average of around 100 daily deaths over the past seven days.

In Algeria the signals are less alarming and the peak of the third wave seems to have passed.

For 20 days, the number of daily cases has been decreasing.

On August 19, the country recorded an average of 719 new infections over the past week and 31 deaths.

1.7% of Algerians received two doses

On the vaccination side, Algeria is far behind its Moroccan neighbor with only 1.7% of its population fully vaccinated on August 19,

against 35% in Morocco.

The vaccination rate of the Algerian population is in the average of the African continent which presented a complete vaccination coverage of 1.6% on July 30.

We are a little surprised by this decision-making because from the outset we put people in the red zone when I think that these decisions have not been carefully considered.

Yasmine, member of the association Le Grand Maghreb

Lucas Bouguet

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