NEW YORK -- 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. “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 expo.