Professor Jean-François Delfraissy, president of the Scientific Council, whose mission ends on Sunday, confesses that he would never have believed that the Covid-19 crisis “would last so long”, in an interview with Le Parisien this Saturday.

This virus is “a real bitch, it was in 2020, it remains so in 2022!

“, he confides in this interview, detailing his regrets but also his successes during more than 2 years of pandemic.

His "first regret", which will follow him "throughout (his) life" is to have passed in June 2020, during the deconfinement in the nursing homes, "health above all, to the detriment, perhaps, of 'a form of humanity'.

Regrets

“My second regret is that we could have made decisions with the citizens,” he judges.

“We could, for example, ask parents about the reopening of schools”.

He also regrets that during this crisis the World Health Organization (WHO) “did not take power over vaccines”.

"It is up to it to guide the industrialists and not up to them to say when they must be adapted", he believes, describing this "lack of strategic and scientific vision" as a "profound error".

On the “success” side, he is pleased that “the excess mortality in France in 2020 and 2021” is “much lower than among our European neighbors”.

“What reassures me is that we have returned to the model of recommendation and no longer of prohibition”, he adds, judging for example “important to continue to wear the mask in the hospital , but it is now up to the French to choose”.

Awareness "

Referring to the beginnings of the Covid-19 crisis, he declares that he had "awareness" of the seriousness of the situation around mid-February 2020 during a meeting at WHO headquarters.

“We asked lots of simple questions to the Chinese… And they always answered on the side!

“, he remembers, their ambiguity letting him think “that the crisis was surely much more serious than what we thought”.

“But I never would have believed that it would last so long,” he adds.

After the end of July, a committee for monitoring and anticipating health risks, beyond Covid-19, must take over from the Scientific Council.

“I have no illusions.

We will have new tools, but we will be surprised by a new virus which will have other properties,” says Jean-François Delfraissy.

Health

Covid-19: The mask will soon no longer be compulsory but "very strongly recommended" in the hospital

World

Covid-19: The decline of the 7th wave is confirmed despite still high hospitalizations

  • Health

  • Covid-19

  • Company