The family doctor had consulted the President of the Republic’s vaccination file twice to, according to him, warn about security flaws. He will be suspended for two weeks for “failure to comply with ethical obligations.”
Between ethics and whistleblower, the Order of Physicians has decided: Dr. Michaël Rochoy, general practitioner of Outreau (Pas-de-Calais), will be suspended for two weeks for having consulted Emmanuel Macron’s vaccination file twice, the news site reports. doctors Egora.
“Dr. Rochoy maintains that the superior mission of whistleblower that he feels vested with would have allowed him to free himself from his ethical obligations; such justification for the infractions observed cannot be accepted,” is written in the decision of the disciplinary chamber of the council of the Order of Physicians of Hauts-de-France that Egora was able to consult.
“Contrary to what (he) maintains, these data were protected by medical secrecy.”
Alerting is precisely what the young doctor wanted to do, in his words. In August 2021, a few days after the extension of the health pass and the promulgation of a law that requires vaccination against Covid-19, Michaël Rochoy denounced security flaws that allowed all caregivers to access the vaccination record of any patient. The only condition: have your date of birth.
System failures
To obtain a reaction, he wanted to demonstrate that he could access the information of the President of the Republic.
“It literally takes a minute,” he wrote on his Twitter account (now X), accompanied by two supporting photographs.
“Medical secrecy leads us to stop there, but others who are less scrupulous may be listing the status of politicians…”
While conducting his experiment, the doctor discovered, against all odds, that the publicly announced date of his first injection, May 31, was not the date listed on the platform, July 13.
“There I told myself that hundreds of people could have had or would have access to this vaccination file that contains false information, which could suggest that the president would be anti-vaccines or would have been vaccinated late, contrary to what he said. “At the risk of unnecessarily fueling the anti-vaccine movement”, Dr. Michaël Rochoy justified himself in December 2021 before Egora.
Then he decided to notify the Elysée: “Someone told me that he was going to report it. I have not received the slightest response,” he told Release’s CheckNews service.
“Those penalized are my patients”
If Emmanuel Macron’s entourage assured that it was a simple administrative error at the outset, the controversy grew when the dates were made public. After a Médiapart article about this imbroglio surrounding Macron’s vaccination, Health Insurance carried out an investigation.
Dozens of caregivers would have mistakenly consulted the President’s file. Among them, for the second time, Dr. Michaël Rochoy, who wanted to point out that the error had not been corrected. The departmental council of the Order of Pas de Calais then filed a complaint against him.
The sentence fell this Monday: he will not be able to practice from November 1 to 15 due to “failure to comply with ethical obligations.”
“It is a sanction that I consider disproportionate,” he reacted to Franceinfo on Tuesday, announcing, however, that he would not appeal.
“Didier Raoult, despite all his work, after having defended an ineffective and unnecessarily dangerous treatment (against Covid-19, hydroxychloroquine), blamed him,” adds the general doctor, who denies having revealed a secret having take into account Emmanuel Macron’s vaccination status. he was already known.
He deplores that “in history, those punished are not (him), they are (his) patients.”
