The national director of public health, Dr Horacio Arruda, tendered his resignation on Monday evening.
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In a letter to the Prime Minister, Dr Arruda explains that he preferred to resign, since his controversial opinions on the management of the pandemic were starting, according to him, to damage the credibility of the government.
“The recent comments made on the credibility of our opinions and our scientific rigor are undoubtedly causing a certain erosion of the adhesion of pollution. In such a context, I consider it appropriate to offer you the possibility of replacing me before the end of the term of my mandate, at least as a DNSP ”, wrote the doctor.
“Do not see in this gesture an abandonment on my part, but rather the offer of an opportunity for you to reassess the situation, after several waves and in a constantly evolving context”, continued the one who was at the head of Quebec Public Health for 12 years.
This announcement comes in the midst of the Omicron variant wave crisis, which led Quebec to exceed the barrier of 2,500 hospitalizations linked to COVID-19 on Monday.
An emblematic figure in the management of the pandemic which had aroused the enthusiasm of Quebecers in the first months of the crisis in 2020, the management of the pandemic by Dr. Arruda was increasingly criticized and calls for his replacement were made more and more and more, in particular because of its multiple about-faces.
Indeed, the government and its national director of public health had had to back down on several occasions, in particular on the wearing of a mask, presented as useless at the start of the pandemic. More recently, news of the return to work of infected but asymptomatic healthcare workers had taken everyone by surprise.
“It is important to consider each of these recommendations in the context of the knowledge of the moment and of the time”, pleaded Dr. Arruda in his letter by assuring to have made “the best [recommandations] possible ”with the knowledge he had.
The leader of the Parti Québécois, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, judges that the resignation of Dr. Arruda will not change much.
“Dr. Arruda sacrificed himself for the bad decisions of the government, but the structural problem remains: there is in the crisis unit only one scientist, for 15 specialists in politics and comms in the service of F. Legault’s political decisions ”, he quickly commented on Twitter.