In her cramped hotel room with old-fashioned decor, Sophie finds time long. Her vacation, which she returned ten days ago, already seems a long way off. Far also the feeling of freedom, the great expanses and the breathtaking landscapes. The view from his window, which overlooks the area around Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle airport, is no dream, and his space is limited to the 10 m² of his room.
On November 19, she flew to South Africa. And from her trip, besides the wonderful memories, Sophie, a French tourist, came back with Omicron. A variant discovered in the middle of his stay by the country’s health authorities, classified in the scarlet red stride by France. And which has earned him, since his return, strict isolation in the hotel. “To isolate yourself, I understand that. What is wrong is the protocol, really messed up ”, regrets Sophie, who tells 20 minutes his mishap.
Tested positive on her return
After a flight cancellation and two negative PCR tests, Sophie, her husband and her friends returned to France on Monday, December 6, ready to isolate themselves for ten days at home, like all the other passengers. “When we arrived, all the passengers on the flight were tested for antigens. I did mine at 12:07, and at 12:23, it came back positive ”. For Sophie, it was the start of the galley: “A woman in a full suit took me to do a test again, this time PCR, before escorting me back to the room where all the passengers returning from southern Africa were parked. The positives being separated from the others by a simple cord and used the sanitary facilities common to all passengers, without being disinfected after our passage, she underlines. I pointed it out, I was told that there was no staff planned for that ”.
On his side of the cordon, seven passengers on his flight, and others returning from southern Africa. “In the afternoon we were told that we would be put in solitary confinement at the hotel, that we were prohibited from isolating ourselves at home. My husband left, and I just stood there ”. The hours pass. It was not until 11:30 p.m. that Sophie and her companions in misfortune were finally taken to the hotel where they had to isolate themselves for 10 days.
“139 euros per day, no clean linen and disgusting lunch baskets”
They are first brought to the cash desk, “to settle the bill: 139 euros per day. Again, no disinfection after us, ”she observes. In the isolated corridor, “with yellow plastered walls”, a bench bars the door to each room. This is where the three daily meals will be delivered. There too, a poster indicates in several languages that it is forbidden to leave your room. A room “small, not terrible but correct”, Sophie discovers after having retrieved her suitcase, left by her husband before his arrival. “At least I had my things and my computer to telecommute and keep busy. Some comrades were not allowed to collect their luggage at the airport and spent days without a change of clothes or toothbrush! “
Because the group may well be at the hotel, for Omicron covids, it is not the high life. “The first week, we were like plague victims: we were not given clean linen, nor anything to clean the room. And apart from the breakfast, correct, the packed lunches were really disgusting, in the unanimous opinion, describes Sophie. And not delivered at a fixed time, because an unvaccinated part of the staff refused – and it was their right – to drop them off to us, ”she learns from the manager of the hotel, who himself performs this task together. times. “His establishment was requisitioned: he had neither the choice nor the necessary means to manage the situation,” she laments.
“No coordination”
After her first night, Sophie receives a call from the Regional Health Agency (ARS), “to ask me questions. The next day, Health Insurance called me, and the agent did not even know that I was coming back from South Africa, nor when I would have the result of my PCR! It is only on Friday that the results fall: the sequencing has spoken, it is Omicron. In the gang, which communicates by messages, no one has symptoms, but we understand that isolation at home, we must forget.
The first week, “only the volunteers of the civil protection came every day to the news,” she says. Then, nurses from an anti-Covid team came by. Fortunately, we didn’t need a doctor. Because those for whom we had been given contact never answered our calls for a contaminated tourist who arrived after us, whose state of health has deteriorated because of her diabetes, ”she blows.
And for Sophie, this is the heart of the matter. “Strict isolation because of Omicron, of course, is understandable. But when we see at the airport, at the hotel and with the various interlocutors that everything is being done “on the fly”, without the means for the human and medical management of the people, and without coordination between the prefectural and health authorities, while we have been living with the pandemic for two years, it is absurd. We learned from the nurses after a week that in reality, we were entitled to a 10-minute walk outside, while the civil protection had assured us that it was impossible ”.
“We came close to the fine of 1,000 euros”
Ten minutes “stopwatch in hand for the nurse who accompanies us in small groups”, describes Sophie. And to ensure that no one violates his isolation, “twice a day, we receive a call from the police on the landline phone in the room, the key of which is demagnetized. And believe me, we do not move, otherwise it is a fine of 1,000 euros! Moreover, we came close to plum when the police, who also did not know that we were entitled to a walk, came to the hotel just as we were about to go out for the first time! “
It was at this time of isolation that “some were afraid: 139 euros times 10 days, not everyone can afford it,” says Sophie. Moreover, the manager of the hotel was also stressed: he confided to me that he had a slate of 7,500 euros of dissatisfied isolates who refused to pay. We were all relieved after eight days when he told us that the costs would finally be covered by the prefecture ”.
At the end of these ten days, and certificate of the end of isolation in her pocket “for deliverance”, Sophie considers having “learned patience”. But already discovering its limits on the occasion of an unforeseen turnaround. “All my documents indicated an exit this Thursday noon, but the prefectural decree indicates” until the 16th inclusive “, therefore not before the 17th. I will not risk the fine a few hours from the end, but there, really, I can’t take it anymore! “