No Need for French Border Controls Over China COVID Surge: Health Official

PARIS (Reuters) – There is no need for France to impose border controls in reaction to a surge of COVID infections in China, the head of France’s health risks committee said on Thursday.

China has recorded a sharp rise in cases since it relaxed strict measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus, prompting the United States, India, Japan and other countries to impose restrictions on travellers from mainland China.

“From a scientific point of view, there is no reason to bring back controls at the border … but that could change any day,” Brigitte Autran, head of the French health risk assessment committee COVARS, said on French Radio Classique.

Autran – who advises the government on epidemiological risks – said that for now “the situation is under control” and that there are no signs of worrying new COVID variants in China.

“The variants circulating in China are all Omicron variants, which have circulated in France and against which we have acquired immunity,” she added in a separate interview with France Inter radio.

Health officials from the European Union’s 27 countries will talk later on Thursday about how to coordinate the European response to China’s COVID surge.

(Reporting by Myrian Rivet and Geert De Clercq; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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