Franco-Moroccan Woman Faces Quarantine in France Due to Unrecognized Sinopharm Vaccine

An uphill battle for this Franco-Moroccan woman who arrived from Morocco to enroll her 15-year-old son at the Masseube boarding school on September 26. "When I arrived at Toulouse airport, the people in charge of checking my health pass explained to me that mine was not valid," Houda L. tells La Dépêche du Midi. In Morocco, she had been vaccinated with Sinopharm. Vaccine not recognized by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Only the Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) vaccines are.

As a result, "I was therefore asked to self-isolate. Which I did in a hotel in Auch. I had to postpone my son’s enrollment, who will miss his return to school," she regrets. She agreed to undergo a 10-day quarantine "with only two hours allowed, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., to go out to buy food or medicine." Fearing to miss her son’s enrollment in high school, she filed a gracious appeal with the prefecture. Unproductive. "They told me: the law is the law," she explains.

For nearly a month now, French or foreign people vaccinated with the Chinese formulas Sinovac and Sinopharm or any other vaccine recognized by the WHO can obtain their health pass, provided they receive an additional dose of mRNA vaccine, Pfizer or Moderna. Houda L. agreed to be vaccinated a third time.

After the quarantine period, the Franco-Moroccan and her son went out and went to the Masseube boarding school this Wednesday. "The high school told us that there was no problem for the enrollment, so everything ends well," rejoices the mother. "But I wanted to testify, because it is a situation that many people know. Especially French expatriates living in Morocco."