Paris (AFP)
Time for clarification?
The president of the French Rugby Federation (FFR) Bernard Laporte is received Friday morning (8:00 am) at the Ministry of National Education, Youth and Sports, in the context of the case of coronavirus contamination of the XV of France .
The Blues recorded sixteen cases of Covid-19 between February 16 and 25 in their training center in Marcoussis, in the Paris region: twelve players and four members of the management including coach Fabien Galthié.
The appearance of this cluster resulted in the postponement of the Six Nations Tournament match against Scotland, scheduled for February 28.
Have there been violations of the sanitary bubble, imposed on the national team?
The Minister Delegate for Sports Roxana Maracineanu had asked the boss of the FFR for an internal investigation, while asking the Ministry of Health, to shed light on the outbreak of the virus in the French ranks and determine the chain of contamination.
It is about the conclusions of this report, completed in the middle of the week, that Laporte, himself former Secretary of State for Sports (2007-2009), is to meet with Roxana Maracineanu and Jean-Michel Blanquer on Friday, Minister of National Education, Youth and Sports.
This meeting follows a technical meeting between the teams of the ministry and the federation on Thursday.
In this report, the FFR released Fabien Galthié from all responsibility, who had attended a rugby match on February 7 played by his son, thus leaving the health bubble.
- Galthié cleared customs -
"He is not the zero patient," the president of the medical commission of the FFR Roger Salamon said Thursday on RTL.
For the FFR, the virus entered the XV of France via a player of the French team at seven, requested for the training of the Quinzists in Marcoussis.
But the Federation has not always made this speech.
"Our only certainty is that no player of the XV has been contaminated by a player from France 7, since the positive cases of this week are transmissions within the group XV of France", had affirmed Serge Simon, vice -President of the FFR and "covid manager" of the Blues in an interview with the Midi Olympique newspaper on February 22.
And to assure: "The patient zero, we know him: he is our physical trainer."
This physical trainer was the first positive case communicated by the FFR on February 16 before Galthié, first considered as a "suspicious" case, was diagnosed positive the same day.
"In view of the version changes to which we have been entitled in recent days, it would have been much preferable to have an independent and external audit (at the FFR)", estimates Florian Grill, leader of the opposition to the management committee of the FFR.
- Fourth tricolor cluster -
The president of the Ile-de-France League stresses that this is the fourth cluster for tricolor rugby after the contaminations in the ranks of the women's XV of France in the fall, of the under 20s in January and therefore of the septists.
Why this sequence?
Other questions remain.
Were the French players who left their hotel to eat waffles in the street in Rome the day before the match against Italy on February 6 in the nails?
"I don't think it was marked in the protocol that players could go out to eat waffles. Or if they go out to eat waffles, they had to be retested when they re-entered the bubble on contact. others, "said Maracineanu on the channel L'Equipe on Friday.
These players have been retested on returning, Laporte replied on Sunday on France 3. But wasn't that taking a risk in view of the incubation period of the Covid-19?
"We can be + positive + in the fifteen days which follow a contact. It is a rather diabolical virus", underlined in an interview with AFP Friday the infectious disease specialist Eric Caumes, member of the medical commission of the FFR.
The American basketball player from Sacramento Richaun Holmes had to observe ten days of isolation last July after having recovered an order of "chicken wings" (chicken wings) outside the "bubble" of the NBA.
© 2021 AFP