Zdenka Jágrová is retiring as Prague’s chief hygienist. Zdeňka Shumová should become the new director of the Prague hygiene station after completing the necessary administrative tasks, Jágrová said. Shumová should start on January 1, but the Health Ministry has not officially confirmed the selection.
“The selection procedures are still ongoing. We will not comment on these administrative procedures until they are completed,” Kryštof Berka from the ministry’s press department said.
Jágrová left her post due to her retirement. She was given a flower, a fragment of the mayor’s chain, and a diploma by Mayor Zdeněk Hřib (Pirates). Hřib highlighted that during the roughly two-year-long pandemic, there was no rift between the city’s leadership and the management of the sanitary station. “It’s not just a thank you for the professional side of it, but the human side,” he said.
Jágrová said she would not have achieved her work results if she had not had good working partners. She praised Prague, among other things, for building many vaccination sites.
Jágrová, a physician and epidemiologist, is retiring in December because of her age; according to the requirements of the service law, the director cannot be older than 70. She became the director of Prague’s sanitation department in 2019. In September, she replaced Jan Jarolimek, whose two-year appeals court upheld probation and a half-million-crown fine for blackmailing a subordinate. Jágrová previously headed the anti-epidemiology department at the Prague hygiene department. In the past, she also worked at the Central Bohemian Hygiene Station in Kolín.