“Clearly there was a desire to conceal the shortage of masks”, denounce Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme

While Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme publish their book The judges and the murderer in which they reveal behind the scenes of the judicial investigation of the Court of Justice of the Republic which targeted former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe and his ministers Agnès Buzyn and Olivier Véran concerning their management of the Covid-19 crisis. The two journalists of the newspaper The World estimate on France Inter on Wednesday January 22 that “clearly there was a desire to conceal the shortage of masks” on the part of the government.

The question of wearing masks has been, from the start of the epidemic, a subject of debate concerning the stocks available, with changes in position on the part of the government on the need to generalize or not its wearing throughout. of the population. The investigation by Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme shows that between 2000 and 2020, 51 reports, action plans, circulars, to prepare for a pandemic, were produced by the highest authorities of the French administration.

“There were reports which said that the imminence of a health crisis was inevitable, and that there was a way to deal with it, at least at least in the first weeks: to be equipped, to be equipped and this was particularly important – not only – on masks, that is to say to equip ourselves with considerable stocks, etc… However, all these reports, all these recommendations remained a dead letter. explain the journalists.

As revealed during the pandemic, the stocks of masks available were insufficient to meet needs, even though in “2006, there was a WHO report which said that France was undoubtedly one of the countries best equipped to deal with a pandemic”underline Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme. “We know that until 2009-2010, we had more than 2 billion masks in stock. When the crisis occurs, we are down to a few tens of millions, some of which are expired, others still valid, and we destroy them . It's surreal, it's crazy. So that means when we go into battle, we're completely helpless.”

The two journalists reveal in their book the content of notes written by ministers during the Defense Councils and Councils of Ministers at the start of the epidemic, showing that they hid the state of mask stocks: “We find ourselves, for example, with Édouard Philippe who was Prime Minister and who wonders 'what happened to the masks ?'. And then we will find ourselves with this same Prime Minister and his ministers who, in front of the media, will say : 'Oh, it's not really a problem, there is no obligation to wear masks, etc.'. And this is where we can say that clearly there was a desire to hide the shortage of masks.”