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Covid-19: Florence Parly acknowledges that soldiers returning from Wuhan had not been tested

2020-09-23T09:53:25.472Z


A senator from the Oise suspects this failure to have been the source of several contamination in his department, the base of these soldiers being located in Creil.


A

"shortcut"

.

During her hearing before the Senate commission of inquiry into the Covid-19, Tuesday, September 22, the Minister of the Armed Forces Florence Parly admitted that she was wrong in asserting, last March, that the soldiers at the Creil air base (Oise) had been tested and confined on their return from a mission in Wuhan (China), the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Read also: Coronavirus: is the Creil military base the cause of the cases in the Oise?

The minister was questioned by Senator LR de l'Oise, Olivier Paccaud, who suspects the military air base of Creil of having been a major source of contamination of his department, which had to face several clusters at the beginning of the epidemic.

On March 4, Florence Parly indicated on the France 2 set that the 18 soldiers in question

"had been tested and confined"

.

However, on September 9, before this same commission of inquiry, Colonel Bruno Cunat, former commander of Creil air base 110, on the contrary affirmed that the soldiers had not been tested before their return to the base.

Noting this contradiction, Olivier Paccaud then questioned Florence Parly:

“Do you maintain that these personnel have been tested and contained?

Wasn't there negligence in the way these soldiers were treated on their return from Wuhan? ”.

"

I swore to tell the whole truth and therefore I must tell you that I said something incorrect on March 4 to France 2",

then admitted the minister.

“It was a shortcut.

What happened was that the crews were subjected to an extremely strict health protocol but which in fact did not include at the time of tests (…) Not being a doctor, I beg your pardon the somewhat shortened character of my formula, ”

she continued, mentioning a monitoring protocol for 14 days.

How to justify this failure?

"The dogma at that time was not to test everyone but to test symptomatic patients"

, then argued, alongside the Minister, Maryline Gygax, director of the military health service.

The military at the origin of a cluster?

Were the soldiers at the Creil base able, therefore, to be at the origin of one or more clusters in the department?

Based on the epidemiological investigation of public health and the military health service, Florence Parly, like Colonel Cunat, considered that this hypothesis

"was very unlikely"

, for several reasons: The Esterel (repatriation plane) did not descend from the aircraft in Wuhan, they were wearing equipment, and were respecting safety distances.

Finally, in Crépy-en Valois, cases of Covid-19

"occurred before occurring in the base"

.

"January 14, 2020, before the return flight from Wuhan,"

said the minister.

"No, definitely no, the Creil military base is not the source of a cluster in the Oise,"

she insisted.

Read also: Coronavirus: in Crépy-en-Valois, the school served as an incubator for the epidemic

Olivier Paccaud, however, did not seem convinced by the arguments of Florence Parly.

Senator LR wonders in particular about the link between 21 cases of Covid-19 from the Jean Monnet high school in Crépy-en-Valois, and rank and file sailors who had a citizen partnership with a class at the school.

However, eight of these sailors had gone to the school on February 5 and 6.

"I am sorry to tell you that this report does not mention the presence of these sailors (...) from there, we can, unfortunately, suspect many things (...)"

, he replied to the minister.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2020-09-23

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