Czechs reappoint old health minister after losing four in eight months

Czech Health Minister Petr Arenberger resigned on Tuesday after less than two months in office after coming under media scrutiny over property holdings and other business dealings, becoming the fourth health minister to exit in eight months.

His portfolio, in a country that has suffered one of the world’s highest per capita coronavirus infection rates, is going back to Adam Vojtech, who last September when the epidemic situation deteriorated sharply after a summer of relaxed restrictions.

With four months to go until an election, the opposition said Prime Minister Andrej Babis’s personnel policy was chaotic, and resembled the medieval Astronomical Clock in Prague’s Old Town Square, which shows rotating statues of saints every hour.

Vojtech was replaced last year by an epidemiologist and reserve army colonel – who quit after being caught breaking pandemic restrictions by visiting a restaurant.

Another minister was forced out after disagreements with Babis and under pressure from President Milos Zeman, who had unsuccessfully demanded that the government buy the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.

Arenberger was a Prague hospital director before joining the government on April 7, when the Czech Republic was emerging from its worst COVID-19 wave to date.