France will quarantine all travelers from Spain, in a reciprocal measure to that applied by the Spanish Government to all foreign travelers, said the Elysee palace.
Spain is starting to end a very strict confinement period, having announced that it would impose a quarantine period on all foreign travelers arriving in the territory, in order to try to contain the spread of the new coronavirus.
Today, the French Government was surprised by the Madrid decision and announced a reciprocal measure for travelers from Spain, imposing a 14-day quarantine, starting on Friday and until May 24, leaving workers exempt cross-border, truck drivers and air crews.
“France will impose quarantine from the moment Spain does so, under the principle of reciprocity,” said the French Presidency, adding that this type of restriction was not his wish.
“We didn’t know about this measure in Spain. We heard about it now. We had not adopted quarantine measures in relation to Spain, nor to our European partners. We will do this only as a measure of reciprocity ”, explained the Presidency’s office.
The Elysee palace recalls that, with restrictions in force throughout the European Union, “there is very little air traffic, few trains and little movement on the roads” between Spain and France, the majority of whom are cross-border workers, who will not be covered by this quarantine.
Globally, according to a report by the AFP news agency, the covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 297,000 deaths and infected more than 4.3 million people in 196 countries and territories.
More than 1.5 million patients were considered cured.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in central China.
After Europe succeeded China as the center of the pandemic in February, the American continent now has the most confirmed cases (1.88 million versus 1.81 million on the European continent), although with fewer deaths (113 thousand against 161 thousand).
To combat the pandemic, governments sent 4.5 billion people home (more than half of the planet’s population), paralyzing entire sectors of the world economy, in a “great confinement” that several countries have already begun to alleviate in the face of declining prices. new contagions.
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