Agnès Buzyn, former Minister of Health, recalls being “the first in the world” to hold a press conference during the pandemic

Former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn was the guest of “4 Vérités” on France 2, Wednesday October 4, on the occasion of the release of her book Newspaper. January-June 2020 (ed. Flammarion), which looks back on six months of the Covid-19 crisis told from the inside. Presenting this book as “feedback, a contribution to the debate”Agnès Buzyn estimated that “if we want to learn the right lessons from this story”, “we have to have the whole story”.

Return to the text messages with Emmanuel Macron made public

In January 2020, when Covid-19 was only known at the time as a vague virus present in China, Agnès Buzyn held a press conference. “I am the first in the world to hold a press conference, not to say that everything is fine, but because I have the perception that there is a risk, and I want to gradually raise the level of awareness and understanding of what is happening among the French”she said.

In his Newspaper, Agnès Buzyn publishes text messages exchanged with Emmanuel Macron and Édouard Philippe, Prime Minister at the time. Texts that the former minister justified having made public by the fact that “all these exchanges were sucked away” from his phone “during the search in 2020” as part of the investigation by the Court of Justice of the Republic into the management of the pandemic. Agnès Buzyn is now placed under the status of assisted witness in the investigation. “These texts were read by dozens of people, and above all, some of them have already leaked to the press”she added, before estimating: “For me, it’s more of a historical document that I deliver to the French while trying to be factual.”