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For two years, the report of the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs requested in 2020 on the management of the Covid crisis has been kept under the seal of confidentiality. Revealed on January 4 by our colleagues from Paris, many flaws are now updated.
It took two years for the report of the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (Igas) concerning the management of the start of Covid in France to be finally disclosed by journalists, in this case those of the Parisian.
However, the government originally promised to be transparent about this report, the conclusions of which were released in November 2020. But its confidentiality may be linked to its content: the 205-page document written by four inspectors draw up a list of serious failures, revealed on January 4.
Three decisions particularly targeted by the Igas report
Thus, the executive in office at the start of the Covid in France (between January and June 2020) is criticized in particular for three decisions:
- The lack of masks;
- The delay before activating the interministerial crisis centre;
- The maintenance of municipal elections in March 2020.
Decisions which had already been denounced by a senatorial report, published at the end of 2020.
Regarding the lack of masks, the Senate inquiry committee had pointed out the fact that “the government knowingly concealed the shortage of masks” at the start of the health crisis.
But it is really the lack of organization that seems to have failed the French government. A lack of scale in particular, which was not up to the health threat. Thus, according to the Igas report, the French authorities have had too modest a crisis centre, the Corruss (Operational center for the regulation of response to health and social emergencies) without setting up a truly “ministerial” with reinforcements “pre-designated and trained in crisis management”.
Jérôme Salomon, then Director General of Health would thus have had to manage strategic, scientific aspects and the direction of operations. “This results in an overload at the level of the DGS, Director General of Health” we read in the report. All the more so when we know that the crisis unit was only activated from March 17, when the threat of covid weighed in from December 2019.
Finally, the Igas report deplores a disorganization of the crisis center with, for example, 25 organization charts in three months, which betrays a fragile functioning.
“No country in the world was ready to face a crisis of this magnitude”
The leaked report, Olivier Véran, spokesperson for the government and former Minister of Health during the covid crisis, had to answer for its content after the Council of Ministers on January 4. At the question “What lesson could the ministry have learned from this report in the management of the aftermath of the Covid crisis?”the former minister defended himself:
“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.
According to his words, Olivier Véran then asked the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs himself to make a report, “an observation on the organization before, at the start of the crisis and to make proposals to change the organization of care and a response to crises”.
On the other hand, as Le Parisien points out, in the continuation of his article, on the 32 recommendations given by this report with a view to improving the functioning of the Ministry of Health, Olivier Véran did not say a word.