5 years later, Horacio Arruda reflects on chaos of the pandemic, decisions as top health official

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?