The Health Risk Monitoring and Anticipation Committee (Covars), successor to the Scientific Council created to deal with Covid-19, is now complete, with 18 members, whose appointments have been published in the Official Journal (JO) . Until then, we only knew the name of the one who had taken over from Pr Jean-François Delfraissy: Pre Brigitte Autran, immunologist and great specialist in HIV. The Covars has 18 members, including 15 scientists or health professionals (12 men and three women!), according to a decree published in the JO, a few hours before its official installation by the Ministers of Health and Prevention François Braun and Research Sylvie Retailleau. They are appointed for a period of two years, renewable once. Some former members of the Scientific Council are part of it. It’s from the virologist Bruno Lina (great flu specialist), from the infectiologist Denis Malvy, from Simon Cauchemez, modeler at the Institut Pasteur, from the veterinarian Thierry Lefrançois, because there will obviously be a question of zoonoses, these infections that pass from animals to humans. The Covars will also include a former member of the Vaccine Strategy Orientation Council (COSV), the structure chaired by Professor Alain Fischer, also dissolved. They are Mélanie Heard, head of the health division of the think tank Terra Nova; we owe him a recent contribution on Monkeypox and the legacy of AIDS. Among the newcomers, a specialist in “wildlife ecology and ecosystem health”, Patrick Giraudoux, a deputy head of emergencies at the Nice University Hospital, Julie Contenti, a general practitioner, Olivier Saint-Lary, or even a demographer, Annabel Desgrées du Loû, who is also a member of the National Ethics Committee (CCNE). In addition to these specialists, there are two patient representatives, Yvanie Caillé, founder of the Renaloo association (and former member of the COSV), and Céline Offerlé, administrator of AIDES and director of the TRT-5 CHV. The Covars will also be able to count on the participation of a citizen representative, in the person of Véronique Loyer, volunteer director at the Claude Pompidou Foundation. This committee, created this summer, therefore succeeds, with a broader aim, the Scientific Council created in 2020 and chaired by Professor Jean-François Delfraissy, which ceased to exist with the lifting of the state of health emergency at the end of July 2022. The mission of Covars is to monitor “the health risks linked to infectious agents affecting humans and animals”, “environmental and food pollutants” and “climate change”. This global vision, described as “one health” by its promoters, is increasingly defended by a number of public health specialists. “Faced with these new challenges, it is essential to be able to have a committee made up of different scientific expertise to assess the risks in their entirety, and also their physical, psychological and societal consequences”, underlined the two ministers in a communicated. The Covars, whose opinions will be made public, is responsible for making recommendations in the face of a health threat or crisis. “Among the risks already identified and on which the Covars will have to decide in the coming weeks, include the resurgence of the Covid-19 epidemic or the projections attached to the Monkeypox epidemic, but also polio or dengue fever by example,” according to the ministry statement. This committee will be able to “Seize itself according to the potential risks” identified, and expand if necessary “During possible crises” to “Add the best expertise”, recalled the ministers.
