Fico cabinet takes revenge on chief hygienist for pandemic management

Speaker of Parliament Peter Pellegrini (Hlas) announced on Tuesday that chief hygienist Ján Mikas would be removed from the post within hours.

The expert has been blamed by the now coalition parties (SNS, Hlas, and Smer) for the alleged mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic for a long time.

Health Minister Zuzana Dolinková (Hlas) will dismiss Mikas on Wednesday, February 14, at the latest.

“Due to the fact that there are only a few qualified experts in public health in Slovakia, the selection of a new chief hygienist was not easy,” said the minister.

A long-time worker in the public health field, Tatiana Červeňová will replace Mikas as of Thursday.

SNS achieves its goal

In an interview on Tuesday, the Hlas leader noted that the dismissal wasn’t related to the Slovak National Party (SNS)’s earlier request to sack Mikas. “We’d discussed his replacement long before [SNS leader] Andrej Danko’s proposal,” said Pellegrini. Hlas called on his removal as early as in 2021.

SNS asked the chief hygienist to resign on February 10, calling him a symbol of failure to handle the coronavirus pandemic well.

Restrictions often affecting personal freedoms, which were adopted in the years 2020 to 2022 to limit the spread of Covid-19, divided society. Mikas became one of the targets of hatred. SNS and Smer questioned pandemic measures and vaccinations and ignored them.

“If Mikas doesn’t draw responsibility for the previous three years on his own, SNS will ask the health minister to dismiss him at the next coalition council session,” the party said in its press release several days ago.

Appointed in 2016, Mikas told the TASR news agency that the party’s recent call was yet another attack on himself and other experts who tried to reduce impacts of the pandemic on people’s health and lives. At the same time, he added that he was prepared to cooperate with any institution that would investigate the management of the coronavirus pandemic. It is the SNS party that has been calling for this investigation.

“I don’t oppose examination of the management of the coronavirus pandemic by the General Prosecutor’s Office, the Supreme Audit Office, or the government proxy for investigation into management of the Covid-19 pandemic,” Mikas said on February 11.

This proxy is anti-vaxxer and SNS MP Peter Kotlár. He would like to turn Mikas into a cooperating defendant to learn more about the management of the pandemic by the past OĽaNO-led governments. It is unknown who will help him investigate the handling of the pandemic.

Last week, PM Robert Fico (Smer) sent a letter to the health minister to make all relevant information available to the Kotlár-led commission, wrote Denník N.

The opposition stands up for Mikas

The opposition parties condemned the coalition for an attack on Mikas.

KDH parliamentary caucus chair Martina Holečková has said that she understands that SNS has problems with Mikas, as ‘the party put a disseminator of hoaxes in charge of the commission investigating the pandemic’. SaS MP Jana Bittó Cigániková has also denounced attacks on experts. “We should be grateful when experts with a quality education help the state to function,” she said.

If the health minister cannot weather the pressure from SNS, she has no business being a minister, Bittó Cigániková concluded.