On Monday May 25, 2020 the first Air France flight AF982 landed at the Yaounde Nsimalen International Airport where all passengers arriving from Paris were managed along a carefully planned and supervised sanitary circuit within the airport.

On very high instructions, one flight per week has been authorized to AIR France as part of the resumption of commercial flights. Thus, in preparation for the reopening of borders to air traffic, a passenger health circuit has been set up and coordinated by teams of health, police and operational security officers from the CCAA for the management of this first flight.

Thus, a first medical team was positioned at the exit of the bridge and was in charge of: the recovery of health cards and the checking of results of the tests of screening of COVID 19 (PCR) dating less than three (03) days old of the passengers of this flight.

Afterwards, the passengers were to meet a second medical team at the foot of the staircase in the arrival area. At this level, passengers with screening tests of less than three (03) days old did not require further testing and were only required to self-isolate. And, for those passengers who did not test, they had to take a rapid screening test immediately.

It should be noted that the measures recommend that those who test positive for COVID 19 be immediately transferred to the airport's bus pick-up station for secure transfer to approved centres. And persons who test negative are invited to observe a quarantine in the structures provided for this purpose or at home.

For this first commercial flight, fortunately, there were no suspicious cases or confirmation of Covid-19 contamination requiring treatment.  

However, passengers who did not have recent negative COVID 19 test results were required to sign a self-isolation undertaking at home or at hotels of their choice, for a period of 14 days, at the end of which they undertook to re-test.

Also, all preventive measures such as wearing a protective mask, maintaining physical distance, temperature checks and washing hands were respected. And all passenger luggage was also disinfected to prevent the spread of COVID 19.

The Director General of the Cameroon Civil Aviation Authority (CCAA) was present at the resumption of this first commercial flight and invited the CCAA airport security officers (ASO) who were involved in access control, the sterilization of the corridors, and the distribution of protective equipment, to collaborate readily with personnel of other administrations involved in the passenger disembarkation chain for this first flight.

It should be noted that the tracking of passengers to or from Cameroon is done with the use of an electronic form which is available on the CCAA website.

Hence these measures observed on arrival also apply to departures from Cameroon.

The ultimate objective is to establish appropriate arrangements for better handling of flights during and after this pandemic.

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