Committee for Monitoring and Anticipating Health Risks - Activity report 2022-2024

The French Committee for Monitoring and Anticipating Health Risks (Comité de Veille et d'Anticipation des Risques Sanitaires - COVARS) is an independent and permanent scientific committee reporting to the Minister of Higher Education and Research and the Minister of Health and Prevention. It was created by decree on the 31st of July 2022 by the Prime Minister, succeeding the former Covid-19 scientific council (Comité Covid-19) and the Council on immunization strategy (Conseil d'orientation de la stratégie vaccinale - COSV), two committees created during the Covid-19 pandemic. COVARS' mission is to provide informed advice based on rigorous scientific data and to issue recommendations when a projection reveals a health risk, as well as to ensure scientific monitoring of health risks. Its prerogatives cover health risks linked to infectious agents affecting humans and animals, food, climate change, pollution and the environment.Its members are appointed for a 2-year term, renewable once. The composition of COVARS is set by decree at 16 scientists and health professionals with expertise in health risks, and two representatives of health democracy. Chaired by Professor Brigitte AUTRAN, it is currently composed of 20 members, including an additional representative of health democracy and an expert in the human and social sciences. The diversity of its composition enable the committee to adopt a One Health approach of health risks. Since it was set up on September 29, 2022, the Committee has been regularly consulted on infectious or environmental risks, and has taken up several key issues of health risk anticipation on its own initiative, to issue opinions, warnings and recommendations to the authorities in order to better prepare our country for the emergence or management of health crises.This feedback and activity report summarizes COVARS' approach and working method and presents the main work and achievements of the first mandate ending August 2024. This report also aims to highlight COVARS' strengths, weaknesses and areas for improvement, particularly in its interactions with national and international institutions, and proposes future prospects and topics for the next mandate. During this mandate, the Committee has helped strengthen the country's pandemic preparedness and issued various in-depth advices on emerging pathogens, epidemiological trends, best practices and societal issues in health preparedness and response, working with national and international institutions to ensure a coherent and effective approach to health risks. COVARS showed that it could play a leading role at the Health-Science-Society interface, complementing the work of health and research institutions by providing decision-makers with independent, rigorous and transparent analyses on health risk prevention and preparedness.