It is a debate that keeps coming back and that embarrasses the executive. While the authorities said a few weeks ago that it was not useful for the French to wear a mask to protect themselves from the coronavirus, doubt has arisen. And some denounce a desire to hide the reality: that of a shortage of masks, requisitioned for those who face the disease every day in hospitals and nursing homes.
Since then, a question remains: has the government lied about the usefulness of these masks, as the journalist and doctor Marina Carrère d'Encausse said on Europe 1 on Thursday? We asked the question to the spokesperson for the Republic on the March and deputy for the Yvelines, Aurore Bergé as well as to the president of the group Les Républicains au Sénat, Bruneau Retailleau.
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Aurore Bergé, LaREM spokesperson and MP for Yvelines
"No one has lied about the usefulness of these masks. Besides, the WHO, which has no other interest than to protect the health of the entire world population, made exactly the same recommendations as that of France. Which is certain, and I think the Prime Minister said it clearly: from the moment when we are faced with a global shortage because China wanted, what we can understand , reserve the production of its masks first of all for its population, each State has managed the shortage that this caused. And so this is the reason why obviously the masks were first reserved for those who need it.
The French do not need FFP2 masks which must, of course, be reserved for caregivers. And besides, it has been said that, even with much more in-depth stocks, these FFP2 masks, which are the ones that protect the most in the case of invasive intervention, should only be reserved for caregivers.
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But I fully understand the doubts and concerns that can be expressed because we are all faced with a situation that is painful for our families, our parents, our grandparents, our relatives and friends. So I understand that these questions exist and that we want to know what happened or badly happened and I think that it will be absolutely necessary to say everything ... But the exercise that was done, once again, the Prime Minister yesterday is precisely to put everything on the table, to assume to say what we know and what we do not know and also explain what was the level of preparation, what are the choices that were made ... But in any case, what is certain is that there was no lie, but, faced with a global shortage, there were just choices of protection that have been made. "
Bruneau Retailleau, president of the LR group in the Senate
Things are clear. I was on February 27 at a meeting in Matignon with the Prime Minister during which we were told that there was no problem. The director general of health said on February 26 - and I quote it very precisely -: 'there is no subject of shortage'. However, we now know that we had a strategy that was inspired not by best practices when we said that masks were useless. It was just that we wanted to hide the shortage. So I think that is the past, and I saw and listened carefully to the Prime Minister yesterday. I felt that there was an effort to be transparent. I found the exercise successful. I said enough that the management had been too chaotic, that there had been a cacophony and a lack of anticipation to recognize when things are better.
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Moreover, it was after my arrests that the government issued a decree to authorize all communities in France to order masks because we couldn't do it. It was also following my arrests that we made an airlift. At first, everyone thought it was a fanciful request. Today, if there were no airlift, we would not have masks arriving from China to France. "