Pension reform, aid for bakers to reduce the electricity bill or even paracetamol shortages… The government spokesperson answered several questions on Wednesday morning after the Council of Ministers. One of them related to the confidential report of the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (Igas), which our newspaper revealed this Wednesday, and which alerts on the organizational failures and the shortcomings of the Ministry of Health during the first phase of Covid-19, between January and June 2020.
According to the Inspection, the residents of retirement homes had in particular been “set aside” in the system of the health crisis center. CNews political journalist Élodie Huchard asked Olivier Véran in particular: “What lesson could the ministry have learned from this report in the management of the aftermath of the Covid crisis? »
“First of all, it’s a report that I asked for, so I’m not going to deny it, I asked for it. And I asked for it for good reasons, ”replied Olivier Véran, who held the post of Minister of Health from February 2020 to May 2022. Either during the period analyzed by the four Igas inspectors who wrote this “feedback (retex) » on the crisis management of the ministry of the avenue de Ségur (Paris VIIe).
“Fortunately, we ask for this type of assessment”
“When I arrived as Minister of Health at the start of an unprecedented crisis, I effectively faced an organization that was not sufficiently prepared to deal with crises of this magnitude. By definition, by the way. No country in the world was ready to face a crisis of this magnitude since all countries were hit by the same virus, in roughly similar conditions,” continued the current government spokesperson.
“When the bulk of the acute phase was over, I asked the General Inspectorate (of social affairs) independently to make a report, an observation on the organization before, at the beginning of the crisis and to make proposals to change the organization of care and a response to crises. Other reports came after, the Pittet report in particular, an international report by independent experts. And other reports will still come,” added Olivier Véran.
Before concluding on this subject: “It is completely necessary and completely normal. And I was going to say fortunately that we ask for these types of assessments in order to be able to adapt our response system to deal with other possible future crises. »
On the other hand, on the follow-up given to this “retex” which makes 32 recommendations to improve the functioning of the Ministry of Health, its former occupant did not say a word. All the more surprising since he was still installed on avenue de Ségur, in November 2020, when the report he had commissioned five months earlier was given to him. Did he take advantage of the eighteen months (until May 2022) that he still had at the head of this ministry to carry out or initiate the necessary changes?