The ritual is now well established.
Since January 1, any passenger arriving from China is likely to have to take a Covid test on arrival in France, if they are not simply stopping over there.
The goal is not so much to know if he has been infected with SARS-CoV-2, but rather to identify which variant it is in the event of a positive result, thanks to sequencing.
And therefore, not to miss a new undetected viral strain in France.
So far, the data is reassuring.
“All the variants that we identified were already known in France”, indicates to the Parisian Benoit Visseaux, virologist at the Cerba laboratory, in charge of the sequencing of the positive samples from the Parisian airport Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle until this week.
These are, more specifically, sub-lineages belonging to the large family of the Omicron variant, and present at relatively low levels for more or less a long time in France.
"It was mostly BA.5.2, with also a bit of BF.7 and a sample of BQ.1.1," says the manager.
Since mid-November, this Omicron BQ.1.1 is the majority in France and in much of Europe.
“Lack of adequate and transparent sequencing data”
In total, during the first week of January, 164 passengers from China tested positive on arrival (despite having had to present a negative test before departure).
In 33 cases, the viral load was high enough for the sample to be sequenced.
Read alsoCovid-19 in China: “What is happening is a game-changer”, warns virologist Christian Bréchot
Italy had also already announced, at the end of December, that it had only identified strains of SARS-CoV-2 already known among passengers coming from China.
In recent days, the World Health Organization and the European Center for Disease Prevention had affirmed, on the basis of information communicated by China, that the variants circulating there were already known in Europe.
But a hint of opacity reigns over the Chinese data.
A US official had criticized in late December "the lack of adequate and transparent sequencing data" provided by China.
Hence the tests imposed by many countries before departure and/or on arrival from the most populous country in the world.
