Ex-NYC COVID adviser is fired after video reveals he attended parties during pandemic

NEW YORK (AP) — A former New York City official who helped coordinate the city’s response to the pandemic was fired from his private-sector job after a recording showed him talking about attending a sex party and other private gatherings when the city was urging people to practice social distancing.

Dr. Jay Varma was terminated from his position as executive vice president and chief medical officer at SIGA Technologies, the New York-based pharmaceutical company disclosed in a filing Monday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Varma served as a senior public health adviser to then-Mayor Bill de Blasio from April 2020 to May 2021. He regularly appeared with the Democratic mayor at press briefings discussing the city’s COVID-19 response and helped develop programs and strategies to combat the virus, including encouraging people to wear masks in public, get tested regularly and get vaccinated, once vaccines were available.

A hidden-camera video posted last week by a conservative podcaster shows Varma speaking casually to a woman about attending gatherings even as he served as a face of the city’s pandemic response.

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“I did all this deviant, sexual stuff while I was on TV and people were like, ‘Aren’t you afraid? Aren’t you embarrassed?’” he said at one point in the edited recording. “And I was like, no, I really like being my authentic self.”

Varma also acknowledged how disastrous his actions would have been to the city’s efforts had they been exposed at the time.

“It would have been a big deal,” he said at another point in the video. “It would have been a real embarrassment.”

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned in 2023 after a yearslong government inquiry revealed he and members of his administration attended parties in government offices in violation of COVID-19 lockdown rules at the time.

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom faced criticism for flouting his own pandemic rules when he attended a friend’s birthday party at the swanky French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley in November 2020.

Varma declined Tuesday to comment on his firing, but acknowledged the authenticity of the video in a statement provided by a spokesperson.

“I take responsibility for not using the best judgment at the time,” he wrote, adding that the recordings were from private conversations that had been “secretly recorded, spliced, diced, and taken out of context.”

Varma didn’t elaborate on the events he referenced in the video, but acknowledged attending at least three private gatherings during his City Hall tenure.

Varma, in the video, said one party took place in a hotel room in August 2020 with about 8 to 10 people, including his wife, who were naked and taking the recreational drug molly, or ecstasy.

By then, New York’s governor had begun easing restrictions, with indoor gatherings of up to 10 people permitted months earlier. Varma said he still took precautions to make sure he wasn’t caught.

“I had to be kind of sneaky about it,” he said. “I was running the entire COVID response for the city.”

He also attended a drug-fueled dance party with roughly 200 people in a space under a Wall Street bank in May or June of 2021, according to the recording. In mid-May, New York state had raised the limit on indoor gatherings to 250 people and by mid-June, it had lifted most pandemic restrictions.

Varma, who left his City Hall position around that time but continued to serve as a part-time consultant, according to his LinkedIn bio, recalled being worried about being spotted at the party at the time.

“This was not COVID-friendly,” he said in the video, which appears to have been stitched together from recordings made secretly during a number of different social encounters with an unidentified woman, who is off camera.

A spokesperson for SIGA Technologies didn’t respond to emails seeking comment.

Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, declined to wade into the controversy Tuesday during his regular City Hall briefing with reporters. Some local conservatives called for a government inquiry.

“The hypocrisy is outrageous,” said City Council Member Robert Holden, a Queens Democrat, who applauded Varma’s firing. “Millions were impacted by their heavy-handed policies, and the public deserves accountability.”

Varma in his statement defended his efforts to respond to the pandemic and denounced the video as part of “dangerous extremist efforts to undermine the public’s confidence” in vaccines.

“Facing the greatest public health crisis in a century, our top priority was to save lives, and every decision made was based on the best available science to keep New Yorkers safe,” he wrote.

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Follow Philip Marcelo at twitter.com/philmarcelo.