• Suspended prison sentences of 5 to 12 months and a ban on practicing for 3 to 5 years were required on Friday in Nice against health professionals who had issued nearly 500 false negative Covid tests.

  • The Nice Criminal Court judged for "forgery and use of forgery, fraud and endangering others" a pharmacist, a biologist and a doctor.

  • The defense lawyers pleaded for release and the decision was reserved for February 20.

“The law, ethics, the precautionary principle, everything dictated different behavior”, pointed out the representative of the prosecution this Friday in Nice, requesting prison sentences of 5 to 12 months against three health professionals who “deliberately falsified results ".

A ban on practicing for 3 to 5 years was also requested against these laboratory managers in Montauroux (Var), Peymeinade and Nice (Alpes-Maritimes), prosecuted for having delivered false negative tests for Covid-19.

A pharmacist, a biologist and a doctor, aged 45 to 75, were thus tried for “forgery and use of forgery, fraud and endangering others”.

The investigation began after a denunciation to customs.

A total of 497 officially negative screenings but carried out without analysis were validated and sent to patients from three pharmacies in the Eurofins Labazur iLab network between September and October 2020.

Declared negative eight days after the samples were taken

The main defendant, Romain Z., "pharmacist biologist, Bac +10", is accused of having "falsified" 413 tests, while the subcontractor responsible for carrying out the analyzes had not had the time and the ways to achieve them.

It was, according to their defence, under pressure from patients worried about not seeing their results arrive that the three men decided to declare them negative eight to ten days after the samples were taken.

“After 48 hours, the samples were no longer usable. Moreover, according to the doctrine at the time, the patients were no longer contagious after seven days”, declared Romain Z., contesting the endangerment of the customers.

Still under judicial control and unemployed for two years, he appealed against his radiation decided by the Order of Pharmacists.

“Constrained Decisions”

The three men are also accused of having nevertheless asked the Primary Health Insurance Fund for reimbursement of the tests, for damage assessed at 25,500 euros.

“I should have put them on free,” he admitted.

Guillaume Collet, a 45-year-old doctor also, who ran a branch to the west of Nice and who entered 43 false negative results, spoke of "a surge of violence that fell on [his] laboratory", going as far as to death threats.

“So I had to make constrained decisions,” he added, ensuring that he was “not a fraudster”.

The third defendant, Gérard Z., father of Romain, it is also “because the competition was going faster” that the results were falsified.

The defense lawyers pleaded for release and the decision was reserved for February 20.

Justice

Covid-19 in Nice: Three laboratory managers in court for false negative tests

Company

Covid-19 in Nice: Eurofins "strongly condemns individual actions" in the case of false negative tests

  • Justice

  • Nice

  • Paca

  • Court case

  • Covid-19

  • Screening

  • Health