Terry Gulliver defended the skills of lab technologists when he testified in October at the Cameron inquiry into botched breast cancer tests. (CBC)

Eastern Health officials remained quiet about the firing of a key manager at its pathology lab less than a week after testimony ended at Newfoundland and Labrador's breast cancer inquiry, except to say the change was about the future.

Oscar Howell, the vice-president of medical services and diagnostics at the authority, would only say that Eastern Health is trying to bring in new leadership for laboratory services when he answered reporters' questions at a news conference after the firing of Terry Gulliver Wednesday.

Gulliver was one of those responsible for the pathology lab where hundreds of inaccurate hormone receptor tests were produced between 1997 and 2005.

"Standing still is not an option. We felt that a change would help the organization so we have moved forward on that today. This is about the future," Howell said.

"I know there will be much discussion out there today that this is about events from the Cameron inquiry and this is about the DAKO machine and so on. Let me assure you that this is about the future and where we want to take the laboratory. And sometimes you have to make very difficult decisions to help the organization move on."

At the inquiry, Gulliver defended the skills of the lab technologists who reported to him, and insisted that they were well-trained, even though external reviewers had found that staff were not given sufficient training to handle the complicated steps in the hormone receptor tests.

The inquiry was also told that Gulliver did not inform superiors of a pathologist's warning in 2003 that the lab was constantly producing erratic results. Dr. Gershon Ejeckam's warnings surfaced publicly in 2007, shortly before government called the Cameron inquiry.

Gulliver testified that computer records from a discontinued testing technology were likely buried at the St. John's dump. Instead, the inquiry was told only last week that a computer on the DAKO machine was still able to generate the records, which were shipped to Justice Margaret Cameron.

The firing outraged some lab technologists, who feel Gulliver was the wrong person to blame for the testing mistakes.

"We have been told by our supervisors that this dismissal has nothing to do with the commission of inquiry," Lucy Fowler, an immunology technologist at the Health Sciences Centre in St. John's, told CBC News.

"I may get reprimanded for this, but I would say that insults my intelligence," said Fowler. "I really do think it's a direct result of the commission of inquiry, and how Eastern Health feels about what maybe Mr. Gulliver said."

Fowler said technologists believe Gulliver did the best he could to advocate for an underfunded lab.