Perhaps positive for the virus while thinking themselves negative, some of their patients have potentially escalated the Covid-19 epidemic. The people in charge, at the material time, of three medical analysis laboratories on the Côte d’Azur will be tried this Friday in Nice for having transmitted hundreds of fraudulent screening results. Initially scheduled last April, the trial had been postponed at their request.
“The samples in question were well taken but they were not the subject of any analysis”, explained the Nice prosecutor’s office to 20 minutes, which revealed the case in the spring. Negative results were then validated automatically and without any basis.
The fraud would concern at least 497 tests, carried out between September 1 and October 8, 2020, which were thus the subject of this “manual entry”. The three defendants, aged 45 for two of them and 75 for the last, at the head of pharmacies in the Eurofins Labazur iLab network in Nice, Peymeinade (Alpes-Maritimes) and Montauroux (Var), are being prosecuted. for fraud, forgery, use of forgery but also endangering others.
Analyzes invoiced without being carried out
It is impossible today to know how many patients were actually positive and may have transmitted the virus. The people concerned by these fraudulent tests had “been individually contacted at the time according to a protocol established in consultation with the Regional Health Agency”, had simply specified the management of Eurofins. Requested by 20 minutes Thursday, the company, which is a civil party, did not wish to make new statements. Eight months ago, in a press release, she had “strongly condemned criminal individual actions”.
Criminal, but without any “financial interest” defend the main interested parties, yet prosecuted for a damage of 25,000 euros to the detriment of the Primary Health Insurance Fund by invoicing analyzes which were never really carried out. “There is no pecuniary aspect in this affair, supports Me Romain Guerinot, the lawyer for the laboratory technician who officiated in the west of Nice. It is just a question of doctors who have not been able to work in good conditions and who regret it. »
Too many demands and not enough resources
Faced with the investigators, the three respondents had “explained that they had not been able, then, to process the entirety of a large flow of screenings”, explained in April the Nice prosecutor’s office. “At the time, the laboratories were in the context of an unprecedented health crisis. It was the second wave. It was incredible and violent, with very significant pressure for these professionals, ”continues the lawyer.
According to him, the volume of tests was far greater than the analytical capacity. Clearly, there were far too many requests and not enough means. If the Regional Health Agency (ARS) Paca did indeed mention, in a press release published on September 22, 2020, “an embolization of medical biology laboratories”, it nevertheless specified that “the analytical capacities of the laboratories” were then “not saturated”.