The Czech Republic announced a new health minister on Tuesday as it continues its recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. But many in the country may get a sense of deja vu.

       That’s because Adam Vojtech, a 34-year-old lawmaker, has already served as health minister during the pandemic — and he resigned last September as cases began to surge in the country.

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       Vojtech’s appointment, scheduled to last only until the end of the current government’s term after elections later this year, means that the Czech Republic has had four different health ministers in eight months.

       And that tally could have been higher if Vojtech hadn’t been reappointed.

       “The minister will not be the fifth, but the fourth,” Prime Minister Andrej Babis said Tuesday as he announced the resignation of Petr Arenberger, a dermatologist appointed as health minister just in April, following allegations of tax problems.

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       Arenberger had taken the position April 8 after the firing of his predecessor, fellow doctor Jan Blatny, in part because of disagreements over vaccines and covid-19 treatments.

       Roman Prymula, an epidemiologist, was ousted as health minister on Oct. 29 after he was photographed at a restaurant during a strict lockdown period in the Czech Republic following a surge in new cases.

       It was Prymula who originally replaced Vojtech on Sept. 21 last year.

       The high pace of turnover for the country’s top health-care official during a pandemic sets the Czech Republic apart from almost all of its peers.

       It is equal to the number in Brazil, where there have been three new health ministers installed since President Jair Bolsonaro ousted Luiz Henrique Mandetta last April in a dispute over social distancing requirements.

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       Like Brazil, the Czech Republic was hit hard by the coronavirus. According to The Washington Post’s tracking, the country has the second-highest number of recorded deaths per capita, with over 30,000 deaths among its population of 10.6 million.

       But unlike many countries, the Czech Republic saw its first surge in coronavirus cases in the fall of 2020, having avoided the first wave experienced elsewhere that spring to such an extent that residents of Prague held a street party to say “farewell” to the virus.

       Vojtech had been health minister since 2017, but he resigned in September as cases surged in the country, allowing his former assistant and one of the top Czech public health experts, Prymula, to take over.

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       However, Vojtech is now the only recent health minister to have not resigned or been fired amid scandal.

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       Arenberger, appointed last month by Babis, had faced immense scrutiny of his financial holdings since becoming health minister, with journalists noting he owned more than 160 properties and had loaned some to the hospital he worked with.

       The dermatologist had also been criticized by some for dissolving an interdisciplinary group of experts who had been advising him on the pandemic.

       Speaking to journalists on Tuesday, Arenberger admitted he had made errors when declaring his assets but said many of the other allegations were untrue.

       “What I experienced in the last week put me in mind of a media lynching,” he said, according to Radio Prague.

       Read more:

       Unraveling the mystery of Europe’s uneven covid surges

       E.U. agrees on covid certificates to sweep away barriers on travel between countries

       Europe’s vaccine campaign is accelerating. It expects to match the U.S. by July.