Alia * expects to be visited by the police at any hour.
"They come to control my brother", explains in a soft voice this executive in finance, cloistered in the family pavilion in Val-d'Oise since his return from India, there are a week or so.
They had gone as a family to visit their grandmother.
The trip was extended in family confinement.
Before boarding the return plane, everyone had a negative PCR test in their pocket.
But on arrival at Roissy, patatras: antigenic tests then positive PCR, except for the dad.
It was on him, diabetic, that weighed the greatest concern.
For his quarantine, and their isolation, they gave the same address.
And three days later, despite the precautions taken to avoid contact in the pavilion with several sanitary facilities, the father was also infected.
Read alsoFear of the Indian variant: an annex to the emergency waiting area at Roissy
A nurse came by and the family invested in a pulse oximeter to measure blood oxygenation. "It's not the form, my parents are tired, but it's okay", relativizes Alia, who has lost taste and smell, and continues to telecommute despite intense moments of exhaustion. The days are punctuated by police visits, according to a now routine ritual and at a good distance.
“They ring the bell and stay outside, we ask them:
Who do you want to see?
And they answer my brother.
So he goes into the garden and shows his ID card.
Yesterday, they came at 7 am, he was asleep, we went to wake him up, and he showed his face through the window, ”says Alia, who does not understand why the control is limited to her brother.
"The police said another patrol would come, but no one came," she explains dubiously.
"Go ahead, but watch out"
Police side, this mission, to say the least unexpected, could be summed up in the motto released by an official: "Go ahead, but watch out, from afar and masked." "These controls are wishful thinking, they give a clear conscience to public opinion but it would be more effective to isolate these good people in hotels, rather than letting them contaminate each other and less time-consuming for the officials", tackle a policeman from Val-d'Oise.
In the Hauts-de-Seine, Priyapham indicates that his first checks were first made orally.
“I gave my name to the intercom, and the next two times, the police went up to my apartment,” this 31-year-old insurance agent explains to us in a jovial tone.
He counted five visits in all.
And fingers crossed that a negative PCR spells the end of his quarantine on Thursday.
He spent two months with his family in Hyderabad, in southern India.
Although asymptomatic, he indicates that he has scrupulously respected his isolation, his roommate has been accommodated elsewhere and to eat, Priyapham is delivered.
“It is important to remain isolated, I would like India to have the same resources to enforce isolation.
"
"It's a bit violent for a 78 year old man"
"These checks are a little violent for a 78-year-old man," said Mallika, about her father, infected with Covid and "forced to get up to go to the door" in the event of a check. The retiree usually spends the winter months in Kerala, in the southern tip of India. This time, he stayed a little longer, away from the Covid that was raging in France. But the health situation worsening in India, Mallika organized his return to France, by going to look for him. Again, the tests were negative before departure, and positive after landing, for his father. Not for her. "We were made to wait for hours, for a 78-year-old man who is no longer as lively as before, it's a long time," said the girl, confined with her father, in Paris.
Asymptomatic too, Dir, a 23-year-old salesperson, wonders every day how she got the damn virus.
She counted two checks.
“The first time, I showed my identity card, not the second,” she explains in English.
Either way, I'm not going out.
We were warned that we would be fined 1000 euros otherwise.
We were well informed, a nurse at the airport helped us a lot and social security calls me often.
This salesperson hopes to return to work on Monday if her PCR is negative.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, out of 2,479 checks carried out in France, 141 people were fined.
A lot of shopping before isolating yourself
“I hope I didn't miss a visit and that I won't take a plum! », Loose Noémie, Parisian, interior designer, back from Chennai, her fourth trip in two years. During her isolation, she was "sometimes checked at her home", at different times, for an "identity check". "I only had to deal with very nice people", she insists on describing, however, an eventful arrival at Roissy where she had to wait eight long hours with all the other positive passengers, including an elderly person, before being able to leave the airport with the famous prefecture decrees. They inaugurated the new system of these quarantines. That same day, a cloud of cameras accompanied Jean Castex, the Prime Minister,come to ensure that "all precautions are taken" vis-à-vis travelers.
“When we were positive, we were a little in the red zone, summarizes Alia, with a ban on going to the toilet to avoid the risk of contamination, until a nurse accompanies us.
But once out, with the orders, we could go to any other toilet at the airport.
»And free to return to their homes as they see fit.
Most of those we called tell us that they got back by taxi, at their expense, like Mahendra, a 33-year-old father, who explains that he was strictly confined to his home with wife and child in Val-d'Oise after having does "a big load of shopping in the neighborhood business."
"When you go out, you can take everything except the plane"
"When going out, you can take everything except the plane", summarizes Marcel, 60, with a smile in his voice and still not the slightest symptom of Covid, six days after his screening. This site supervisor had left for India in February to install machines there near Calcutta. The health situation precipitated his return. It was his daughter who came to welcome him at Charles-de-Gaulle airport to bring him home, in the Loiret. In case of contact, she was released for 17 days of isolation. "The gendarmes come to check me from the other side of the street, I say hello to them through the window," he said.
Others have fallen back on a night in a hotel before taking a train to their place of isolation.
Thus on April 28, a 44-year-old Indian national subject to an isolation order, after a positive screening at Roissy, was checked at Gare de l'Est on his way to the train. Germany.
What about the Indian variant?
Most of our interlocutors say they are waiting for an SMS or a letter to be finally fixed.
Alia's brother already has his answer: he was infected with the British variant.
* Some first names have been changed at the request of those concerned.