5 years later, Horacio Arruda reflects on chaos of the pandemic, decisions as top health official
1st case of COVID-19 in Quebec was confirmed on Feb. 27, 2020
Five years ago, as fear of COVID-19 spread, Quebecers met Horacio Arruda, then the province's public health director.
Arruda brought energy and zeal to what would become daily updates on the state of the virus's spread. At those updates, Arruda sat next to Premier François Legault and fielded questions on matters related to public health. He explained the government decision-making processes behind closing schools, enforcing a curfew and shutting down restaurants.
As Feb. 27 approaches, the fifth anniversary of the first-ever confirmed case of COVID-19 in Quebec, Arruda sat down with the CBC's Cathy Senay.
Arruda recalled those early days when public health officials scrambled to slow the virus's spread. He said, in retrospect, he thinks schools stayed closed for too long and that had a deleterious effect on some childrens' learning. But given the same information, looking back, he believes he would have made the same decisions.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Cathy Senay: Do you remember how you reacted when you heard that there was a first case of COVID-19 in Quebec?
Horacio Arruda: We knew there was going to have a first case. This first case was the way we thought. It was imported from outside of Canada. That was not a surprise, that was something that we were planning, because this was a pandemic, and this was an emergency of global aspects. So sooner or later, one case would appear in Canada and Quebec.
CS: When you look back, five years ago, are there things that you would do differently?
HA: This is the question that I'm always asked and what I say is that I would probably do the same thing because I would have the same information at that moment. It's so easy to say, if I go back and I knew about the virus I would have done something differently. Probably with the same information, we would have done the same thing.
CS: When Premier Legault declared the health emergency and you had to close schools, how did you feel about this?
HA: We felt bad because we don't want to change or have an impact on people's lives. We know that closing schools, kindergarten, will have an impact on kids but at the same time, we must save lives. That's a life-threatening aspect. We also have a health-care system which is fragile and needs to maintain the capacity to treat emergencies.
CS: But do you have any regrets that maybe schools were shut down too long and that we can still see an impact on kids?
HA: Yes, I do think things were too long, but the reason why they were too long is that we were still having high transmission and the health-care system could not cope. So the choice was to make sure that we save lives and also the capacity to treat other diseases like heart attacks and everything. So because of this, we had to maintain those options. The solution was the vaccine, but the vaccine was not there at the beginning.
CS: I remember the first wave of the pandemic, you became a media darling. Do you think that made a difference for Quebecers to accept the rules and follow them?
HA: I think I really tried to give the information but also give tools to people to lower their stress about this situation.
CS: Was it hard for you in the beginning of 2022 to have to resign? (Arruda stepped down from his role of public health director and is now the assistant deputy minister at the Ministry of Health and Social Services).
HA: I was not looking for that popularity. People could perhaps think that I was looking for that and I always try to focus on my job. But it happened, but I knew it would stop one day and I knew that one day I had to resign.
CS: How did you react in April 2020 when we learned of the tragedies unfolding in long-term care homes, like the Herron?
HA: I knew people would die from that disease because they are older, but in these conditions, this isn't acceptable. I think often of those people and their families because there is a lot of grief because people didn't have access to their family. This is terrible. They didn't have this opportunity to tell them goodbye and nobody to take care of them, giving them water or anything is terrible. I never could imagine that would happen.
CS: Do you regret putting in place the curfew?
HA: No, I don't. We needed it because of the indicators of the health-care system, the numbers of people who were getting sick.
CS: So you have the impression that it was a good tool, that it worked?
HA: Yes, but, before the pandemic, I never thought I would use a curfew. For me, a curfew is something that was used for war or things like that. But we had looked at what other countries did, France and other countries, and they used it and it was a success. So we added it to our toolbox.
CS: Do you have the impression that we are better prepared for another crisis?
HA: Each time we have a crisis, we learn things. You cannot have a crisis that goes smoothly and everything is perfect. So I think we're gonna be. We learned from that pandemic. I hope we're gonna use lessons learned from that pandemic. But we don't know what's gonna be the next crisis.
Edited by Matthew Lapierre