More than seventy notes and opinions, some three hundred meetings and an incalculable number of appearances in radio and television mornings: the Scientific Council is bowing out. After having ensured rigorous monitoring for more than two years and provided opinions to inform public decision-making on the management of Covid-19, this committee made up of sixteen scientists comes to an end at the same time as the law on leaving the state of health emergency, July 31. A page turns, therefore, at the very moment when a seventh wave of contamination reminds us that the epidemic is far from over in France.
“The scientific council stops on July 31, it did not escape you. » In a short sentence, the new Minister of Health, François Braun, ventilated, Monday, July 11 before the deputies, a secret which had not been a secret for several weeks already. The new health bill, currently in first reading in the National Assembly, making no mention of it, its end was implicitly announced.
In addition, Jean-François Delfraissy, the president of the scientific council since its creation on March 10, 2020, wants to leave it “several months ago”he repeated on June 30 at the microphone of RTL. “I only think Covid, I’ve only been thinking about Covid for twenty-four months, he added. It is probably time for a new vision; it’s time to hand over. » The doctor and immunologist will be able to devote himself in particular to the National Advisory Committee on Ethics for Life and Health Sciences, which he has chaired since 2017.
Same atmosphere at the vaccine strategy guidance council (COSV), created in December 2020 under the leadership of doctor and researcher Alain Fischer. As a sign of a need to turn the page, its members faced the difficult exercise of feedback on the anti-Covid-19 vaccination campaign – a document which has not yet been made public. “Many members of these structures would like to return to their initial activities. Maybe it is for the government to give a new start by establishing a new committee? »asks Mélanie Heard, head of the health center of the Terra Nova think tank and member of the COSV.
In the first draft of the health bill, the government indeed proposed the creation of a “committee for monitoring and anticipating health risks” replacing the current Scientific Council. Alas, the article concerning this committee was challenged by the Council of State, in particular in the absence of“prior assessment of the impact of this creation on the organization of health expertise”.
You have 77.83% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.