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Since this Saturday, January 22, the countries of southern Africa are no longer on the red list linked to Covid 19 in France, they go into the orange category. This concerns South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. At the end of November, flights from these countries had been suspended following the detection in South Africa of the Omicron variant. By January 6, several of them had already moved from the scarlet category to red.
No change for vaccinated travelers from Southern Africa. It is always enough to simply have a negative PCR or antigen test carried out less than 48 hours before departure.
On the other hand, for non-vaccinated travellers, the compelling reasons regime remains in force, but the mandatory 10-day quarantine on arrival, controlled by law enforcement, ends. It gives way to a period of “self-isolation” of 7 days.
No more systematic screening tests, either, on arrival on French territory. As for vaccinated people, random samples are now taken at the airport.
This change from red to orange can be explained by the start of a decline in the epidemic in the countries of southern Africa. The number of positive cases has indeed decreased by 44% last week compared to the previous week in the region, according to the Africa CDC, the African Union Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.