Covid-19: a confidential report overwhelms the Ministry of Health

While France is in its ninth wave of Covid, a confidential document, revealed by our colleagues from Parisian this Wednesday, January 4, he came to throw a stone in the pond: it is a 205-page audit of the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs on the management of the very first wave of Covid by the Ministry of Health in the spring of 2020. Our colleagues had tried to obtain the document through official channels, without success. Commissioned by the then Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, at the end of June 2020, the report was intended to be “feedback from piloting the response to the Covid epidemic”, a report on the “successes, difficulties and shortcomings” observed within the ministry, our colleagues explain. It was supposed to be transparent, in the end it was never made public.

Inexperienced staff, general cacophony…

For almost three months, four inspectors met with nearly 375 members of the French administration – ministry, ARS, elected officials, hospitals… The text would be particularly critical, noting the disorganization, lack of preparation and the difficult-to-read decision-making circuit, details of daily life. The report was sent to the Court of Justice of the Republic, empowered to judge members of the Government in the exercise of their function, much criticized in particular for the lack of masks or the maintenance of the municipal elections of March 2020. This court has opened a investigation to judge the part of the executive’s responsibility in the management of Covid which has caused almost 160 thousand deaths.

In its report, the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs notes that the crisis management team organized at the outbreak of the Covid crisis mainly brings together unqualified personnel. According to the document commented by our colleagues, a nameless cacophony reigns within the group, with duplicated activities, topics that fall into oblivion, in particular due to lack of overview…

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On the crisis management side, we notice that we are constantly reorganizing ourselves, without being able to find a sustainable organization. There would have been 25 different organization charts between March and June, our colleagues note. Cooperation between the inter-ministerial crisis logistics unit and French public health has allegedly turned into a war of bells as health workers are severely mask-deprived. The report ends up listing 32 recommendations to follow to better manage the next health crisis… which will happen only a few months later, with the second wave of Covid. And more than two years after the presentation of that report, these recommendations would have had little or no effect, the changes required are titanic, underline the Parisian media. Contacted by our colleagues, the ministry did not respond to their request.

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