- According to the army staff, the contamination of the crew of the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle probably occurred during the stopover from March 13 to 16 in Brest.
- The first cases of illness were not identified on board until early April.
The mystery surrounding the contamination of the crew of the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle seems to be clarified. According to the Chief of the Defense Staff, it was during a stopover in Brest from March 13 to 16 that contamination with Covid-19 would have occurred. "We consider, we think [...] that this contamination occurred at the stopover that took place in Brest in March," said General François Lecointre, interviewed on France Inter .
Nearly two thirds of the aircraft carrier's crew, or 1,046 sailors out of 1,760, tested positive. The crew, on mission since the end of January, were not in contact with an outside element after this stopover in Brest, during which a relief of about fifty people got on board and hundreds of sailors got off down. The first cases of Covid-19 disease were only identified during the first week of April, that is, beyond the incubation period (fourteen) usually accepted for the virus.
Two investigations have been opened
The Minister of the Armies Florence Parly had indicated Friday that "several hypotheses" were "under study", including that the virus could have already been present on board before the stopover. If the hypothesis of the rise of the virus on board during the stopover in Brest is favored, "we cannot be 100% certain of it," conceded the Chief of the Naval Staff, the Admiral Christophe Prazuck, in the Journal du Dimanche . Two investigations, one of command and one epidemiological, were carried out on the management of the crisis on the one hand, the process of contamination of the building on the other hand.
General Lecointre conceded that the question of maintaining the stopover at Brest had arisen but reiterated that in view of current knowledge about the spread of the virus, it had not been considered necessary to cancel it. France had not yet entered confinement. "The decision made by the command of the armies, by myself, by the Chief of the Naval Staff, was to maintain this stopover because it corresponds (to) to a logistical necessity", -He underlines.
Mission resumption planned before summer
The families were then not allowed to board, as had been initially planned, recalled General Lecointre, but the sailors who wished to be able to disembark. "The measures which were given for authorization to leave the city, which seemed at the time and in the state of knowledge of the virus and of what was applied as a rule in France at that time, and in a region, in particular West Brittany in which we had no knowledge of a lesser case, appeared legitimate, "he added.
Admiral Prazuck clarified that the command then asked "the sailors who wished to disembark, a third of whom had family in Brest, to avoid the Auray area which was considered to be a" cluster "". The Charles de Gaulle , which has since returned to its base in Toulon, was to leave on a mission by the end of June. "We will do everything to be able to re-engage the aircraft carrier before the summer," confirmed General Lecointre.
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