Even if France had been able to carry out more screening tests for the coronavirus in early March, this would not have avoided the need for general confinement, estimated this Thursday a member of the Scientific Council, Arnaud Fontanet, at the National Assembly.
The only countries that have "managed to contain" the epidemic "without containment" have done so "through a whole series of measures" and "not just the tests," the epidemiologist told the commission of inquiry. the National Assembly on the management of the coronavirus crisis.
Committee of Inquiry to the Assembly
She heard him in his capacity as a member of the scientific council, alongside the president of this group of experts responsible for advising the government during the epidemic, Jean-François Delfraissy, and two other members.
The targeted countries, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore, have also implemented a very active tracking of people who have been in contact with the sick, with significant "computer monitoring means", and benefit from a "culture of wearing a mask" and "hand hygiene", enumerated Arnaud Fontanet. Despite this, these countries remain today "in extreme tension" to avoid a resumption of the Covid-19 epidemic, he stressed.
"We had no choice"
In France, "on the date when the decision was made, we had no choice," he added, noting that even the European countries where the situation was better controlled had opted for confinement, at the outset. except Sweden.
He answered a question from deputy Eric Ciotti (LR) regarding Jean-François Delfraissy's comment in an interview with the Journal on Sunday June 7, according to which confinement "was not a good decision but the least bad, being gave the tools we had: 3,000 tests a day, when the Germans had more than 50,000 ”.
Difficulties in supplying tests
"We asked that there be more tests" but "we have to see the reality of what we had the capacity to do," observed Jean-François Delfraissy, saying that even with a screening strategy more active, "anyway we would have had the pandemic in France".
Virologist Bruno Lina, also a member of the scientific council, for his part considered that the impossibility of carrying out more tests was linked to supply difficulties in a context of exploding global demand, rather than to slowness. or poor organization of French laboratories.
Jean-François Delfraissy, a doctor specializing in immunology, stressed to deputies how much the scale of the epidemic had surprised everyone, declaring that he himself had "realized the gravity of the crisis only relatively late, around February 20 ”.
No "third health power" according to Delfraissy
"An impact as brutal as this crisis, I had never experienced," said this pioneer in the fight against AIDS, also responsible for coordinating the fight against the Ebola epidemic that occurred in West Africa in 2014. .
He also once again defended himself from having imposed a "power of scientists" with the council he chairs, set up on March 11 by the Elysée Palace. "The third health power does not exist (...) It is a huge joke," he insisted. The scientific council is "a committee of experts who are there to inform government decisions, it is the government that decides," he said.
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