Covid: facing Omicron, France will tighten controls with the United Kingdom
France will tighten border controls with the United Kingdom, including for people who have been vaccinated.
AP - Francois Mori
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
France will tighten border controls with the United Kingdom, including for people vaccinated, in order to curb the spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, the government announced on Thursday (December 16th).
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“
Faced with the extremely rapid spread of the Omicron variant in the UK, the government is choosing to reinstate compelling reasons for travel to and from the UK, and to strengthen the requirement for outbound and outbound testing. arrival
, ”said Matignon in a press release.
From midnight on Saturday morning, any vaccinated or unvaccinated person, with the exception of French nationals, must have a compelling reason to travel to or come from the United Kingdom.
"
Anything that is tourism, business travel for people who do not have French or European nationality, who are not resident in France, will be limited
," said government spokesman Gabriel Attal on BFM TV.
► See also:
Covid in the United Kingdom: the new restrictions are blowing a wind of panic on the public health service
A mandatory test of less than 24 hours
Vaccinated people must, like people not already vaccinated, present a negative test, PCR or antigen, within 24 hours.
Finally, "
people who arrive on our UK soil will have to self-isolate in a location they choose for seven days, controlled by security forces, but the isolation can be lifted after 48 hours if a negative test was done once arrived in France
”, added Gabriel Attal.
This framework, he said, will make it possible to "
tighten the mesh of the net to slow down as much as possible the arrival of cases of the Omicron variant on our soil
".
►
To read also: Covid-19 in France: vaccination opens to the most fragile children
According to the spokesperson for the executive, France has so far detected 240 cases of the Omicron variant but their number is probably much higher.
"
Our logic is to delay as much as possible the development of the Omicron variant on our territory (...) because the vaccination booster is effective on the variant
", explained Gabriel Attal.
The government is calling on travelers who had planned to go to the United Kingdom to postpone their trip.
(With agencies)
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