WASHINGTON — Top Trump administration health officials repeatedly ignored warnings in January and February about the need for masks and other protective equipment to prepare for a coronavirus outbreak, according to a detailed whistleblower complaint from a senior scientist ousted from his post last month.
Rick Bright was abruptly removed in April as head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a research agency within the Health and Human Services Department that, among other duties, was overseeing research on coronavirus vaccines.
Bright contends that ouster was in retaliation for his clashes with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Robert Kadlec, an Azar deputy with responsibility for overseeing public health preparedness. His claims are detailed in a complaint filed Tuesday with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which oversees protections of whistleblowers.
Kadlec, the assistant secretary for Planning and Readiness, oversaw Bright’s office, known as BARDA.
“HHS political leadership leveled baseless criticisms against (Bright) for his proactive efforts to invest early in vaccine development as well as in critical supplies such as masks, respirators and swabs, which were in short supply and would be necessary to combat COVID-19,” the complaint notes.
The 89-page complaint documents repeated efforts by Bright in the first weeks of 2020 to urge Azar, Kadlec and other administration officials to quickly mobilize to secure masks and other protective equipment for the U.S. medical system to prepare for an outbreak of the virus here.
But, Bright notes, his supervisors took little note, instead sidelining him and excluding him from key planning meetings, weeks before the first coronavirus cases were reported in the U.S.
Bright also notes that his skepticism about an anti-malaria drug touted by President Donald Trump as a COVID-19 treatment antagonized senior administration officials.
“In an apparent effort to score a short-term political victory for the Administration during the escalating health crisis,” Kadlec’s office “pressured BARDA to promote the malaria drug chloroquine as a therapeutic for COVID-19, despite a clear lack of scientific support,” the complaint says.
Bright said he was ordered on March 23 by Health and Human Services general counsel Bob Charrow, in a directive from the White House, “to drop everything and make the chloroquine donated by Bayer widely available to the American public.”
Bright was “extremely concerned about the prospect of chloroquine being made available to the public “without close patient monitoring by medical professionals,” the complaint alleges.
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