She was pawing at being able to deliver her share of the truth. In the last days of her Parisian municipal campaign which ended in a bitter failure, Agnès Buzyn kept repeating that she "was in a hurry" to explain her responsibilities in the management of the health crisis which provoked the nearly 30,000 people have died in France to date. And respond to the many criticisms that have been addressed to it. This Tuesday evening, she was able to do so for four hours in front of the deputies of the parliamentary inquiry committee of the National Assembly.
Arriving through a secondary entrance, the former Minister of Health from June 2017 to February 16 last appeared often moved, sometimes tense, searching at length in his many files and files to specify a date, find a number. But she immediately hammered two messages in the form of self-satisfaction. The "anticipation" of the epidemic in France was "out of all proportion with other European countries". And she herself did not "underestimate" the risk and, on the contrary, ensured "good preparation" of the health system. "In no case has the Ministry of Health been slow," she also said.
VIDEO. Hearing of Agnès Buzyn by the fact-finding mission on the impact of the Assembly's Coronavirus
Agnes Buzyn first wanted to detail the chronology of the very first days of the epidemic, explaining that she had adjusted "her awareness to the level of information". From the first alert "around December 25" that she says she launched by "accidentally" falling on Twitter on unexplained pulmonary pneumonia cases in China at her first press conference on January 21. She confides that she quickly had "the intuition" of the gravity of the epidemic. "I set in motion the whole system on January 25 when the World Health Organization (WHO) has not yet declared an international public health emergency (Editor's note: WHO will do it five days later) " she insists.
But it is on the management of the masks and their scarcity that the deputies especially wanted to hear Agnès Buzyn, by passing it on the grill on this subject. Was she aware of the September 2018 note issued by the French public health agency to the Directorate General of Health, according to which a large part of the state's strategic stock of masks was out of date and which recommended buying 1 billion masks , questions Eric Ciotti, LR deputy and rapporteur of the committee of inquiry.
"I was not aware of this letter, it did not reach me," she replies. Agnès Buzyn also claims not to have made the decision to destroy the non-compliant masks either while the stocks were not replenished.
Political Newsletter
Every day, the political news seen by Le ParisienI'm registering
Your email address is collected by Le Parisien to allow you to receive our news and commercial offers. Find out more
PODCAST. Agnès Buzyn: between health crises and political crises
Constantly brought back to this question, the hematologist refuses to take on this responsibility. "This management of stocks, it is not the responsibility of a minister," she insists. But it refuses to question its Director General of Health, Jérôme Salomon, or his collaborators, explaining "to assume completely" the decisions taken by its services.
Agnès Buzyn still ends up recognizing "questions" about the "role of health agencies" in stock control. "Learn in 2018 that a large part of the stocks are expired ... it requires asking how it worked. "
Asked about her hasty departure from the ministry on February 16 to take up the LREM candidacy for the mayor of Paris at short notice, Agnès Buzyn assumed and said that she had left "with the feeling that I did the right preparation". Inevitably, she also had to explain her polemical remarks to the newspaper Le Monde, held the day after the first round of the municipal elections. She described the maintenance of the poll as a “masquerade”.
"I saw everything and I prepared everything"
And explained that she cried when she left the ministry because she knew "that the tsunami wave was before us". "I had spent a terrible day, I was very tired, I was accused on social networks of having seen nothing and it is quite the opposite", justified Agnès Buzyn.
In the article, she also seemed to question the reactivity of the executive couple, even evoking "inertia". "What I said to the World is Stop saying that I saw nothing, I saw everything and I prepared everything ", reacted Agnès Buzyn. “I felt a danger, long before the others. I worked hand in hand with the government. "
