The former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn was indicted for “endangering the life of others” this Friday as part of the investigation of the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) on the management government response to the Covid-19 epidemic. She had been summoned to the CJR earlier in the day.
This is the first indictment in this vast dossier devoted to the manner – criticized, still today – in which the French authorities have anticipated and then managed daily the coronavirus epidemic which has killed at least 115,000 people in France, according to Public Health France.
“The risks of propagation are very low”
Lack of protective equipment for caregivers and for the population, misconceptions about the need or not to wear masks, etc. : The CJR, the only body empowered to judge ministers in the exercise of their functions, has received at least 14,500 complaints since the start of the epidemic, according to the Attorney General at the Court of Cassation François Molins on Wednesday. A certain number of them target Agnès Buzyn, now a senior official at the World Health Organization, and who had managed within the government the beginnings of the epidemic.
She had notably declared on January 24, 2020 that “the risks of the spread of the coronavirus in the population are very low”. Analysis can “evolve”, she also recognized at the time. She then left the government less than a month later to run for mayor of Paris in vain. She had been replaced by Olivier Véran.