His birth was announced in the Official newspaper sunday. A “committee for monitoring and anticipating health risks” will succeed the Scientific Council, whose decisions have punctuated the entire Covid-19 pandemic in France.
“With the end of the health security law, the Scientific Council, naturally, falls but with the risks that we have in our current world concerning the possible emergence of new viruses, I will set up a Scientific Council roughly equivalent”, explained the Minister of Health François Braun on Wednesday on France info. How will this new committee work? Who will compose it? 20 minutes explains everything to you.
What will his role be?
The committee will be responsible for monitoring “the health risks linked to infectious agents affecting humans and animals, environmental and food pollutants, and climate change”. In particular, he will have to “issue recommendations when a projection reveals a health risk”.
It will also have the mission of “issuing recommendations on the measures envisaged by the public authorities in order to fight against a health crisis” and “on the vaccination strategy implemented, if necessary, in the face of a health threat”, according to the decree. Established with the Ministers of Health and Research, it may be seized by one of them or self-seize and its opinions will be made public.
Who will compose this commando?
Nineteen people will make up this “committee for monitoring and anticipating health risks”. It will be chaired by a qualified personality, designated by the Ministers of Health and Research, and composed of “16 scientific personalities or health professionals, a patient representative, a citizen representative”.
It is not excluded that certain members of the Scientific Council – whose mission ends on Sunday with the end of the state of health emergency – are part of it. The names of its members will be “communicated in the coming days”, said the office of Minister of Health François Braun. The president of the Scientific Council, Jean-François Delfraissy, should not however be part of this new crew. “It’s up to others to lead this adventure,” he told the Parisian Saturday.
However, “in a logic of global health”, there will not only be epidemiologists in this new team, specified the minister on Wednesday on France Info. “In the event of a health crisis”, its president may “propose to call on additional personalities for their specific expertise”. The members of the committee will be appointed “for a period of two years, renewable once”.
What will be the differences with the scientific council?
The first difference is that the missions of this new committee will exceed those put in place during the fight against Covid-19, underlined François Braun. According to the Minister of Health, the committee would be “a bit of a commando team of very high-level scientists”. This committee will remain “independent, transparent in its opinions and extremely responsive”, he told France Info on Wednesday.
In addition, with “specialists in human, animal and environmental health”, the committee will allow “a broader approach”, estimated the president of the Scientific Council Jean-François Delfraissy, in an interview with the Parisian sunday. Because the one who has been at the forefront of the fight against the coronavirus refuses to have “illusions”. “We will have new tools, but we will be surprised by a new virus which will have other properties”, he predicted.
What could be their first decision?
A first decision is already sketched out for this “commando” which replaces the Scientific Council. Because the head of the structure will be able to impose the wearing of a mask in hospitals, medico-social and care structures, but also in pharmacies and medical biology laboratories for those over six years old, according to a decree in the Official newspaper.
An obligation that could intervene quickly given the health context. In a column published Friday in The Expressa group of patients, caregivers and scientists has also pleaded for the mask to remain compulsory in hospitals after July 31,