Statements by Didier Raoult before the deputies of the commission of inquiry on the Covid-19 "seem to amount to a false testimony", accuses the AP-HP in a letter to the president of the National Assembly including AFP got a copy on Wednesday. "It seems essential to me (...) that the work of the commission cannot be based on factually false elements, and that the necessary follow-up can be given," wrote the director general of the AP-HP ( Public assistance - Hôpitaux de Paris), Martin Hirsch, in this letter to Richard Ferrand.
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"These statements seriously question the AP-HP"
Martin Hirsch disputes two passages from the hearing of Professor Didier Raoult by the commission of inquiry on June 24: on the one hand, an estimate of the rates of death of patients in intensive care, and on the other, comments on a patient 80-year-old Chinese man hospitalized in Paris at the end of January and who died in mid-February (it was the first death of the Covid-19 officially recorded outside Asia). "These statements, which seriously question the AP-HP, made under oath, seem to me to amount to false testimony," accuses Martin Hirsch in this letter dated June 26.
Two days before, before the commission, Professor Raoult, fervent as much as controversial defender of hydroxychloroquine, had raised the issue of mortality, saying he relied on "work" available online. "The mortality in the resuscitation here, in this work always, is 43%. With us, it is 16%", he had said, without specifying exactly where he got these figures. "Care has gone into the background," continued Professor Raoult, director of the Institut hospitalo-universitaire (IHU) Méditerranée-Infection de Marseille.
Battle over mortality figures in resuscitation
In his letter, Martin Hirsch assures that "we have no data which places at 43% the mortality in the resuscitations of the AP-HP", without specifying how much this rate amounts. "On the other hand, there is to date no published study which compares the mortality rates in intensive care, evaluated under controlled conditions, between Parisian and Marseille hospitals," he adds. Contacted by AFP, the entourage of Professor Raoult referred to the results of the Reva register (European research network in artificial ventilation) appearing in a "report by the AP-HP crisis cell of April 14".
In this document, which dates from two and a half months ago, the period of the peak of the epidemic in France, the percentage of deaths in intensive care was then evaluated at 43% at the AP-HP and 41% outside the AP- HP. The entourage of Professor Raoult also referred to an interview on LCI on June 27 of Professor Eric Caumes, head of the infectious diseases department at the Pitié Salpêtrière hospital (AP-HP). The mortality rate, "for Paris (...), for patients in intensive care, I confirm, it is of the order of 40% unfortunately. But Marseille, I have absolutely no idea", said Professor Caumes .
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The case of an 80-year-old Chinese patient, another bone of contention
In addition, during his hearing, Professor Raoult affirmed that the 80-year-old Chinese patient had presented himself "at the Pitié-Salpêtrière", had "returned home", then "returned 7 days later" and was " come to die in a hospital. " "The only 80-year-old Chinese patient to whom Professor Didier Raoult can refer was admitted on January 25, 2020 to the European Georges Pompidou hospital. He was never sent home," said Martin Hirsch in his letter. He recalls that this patient was then transferred "to Bichat hospital, national reference center", where his daughter, also ill, was also taken care of before curing.
If justice were seized for false testimony before a parliamentary commission of inquiry, the Marseille infectious disease specialist could be condemned up to 5 years in prison and 75,000 euros fine.