NEW YORK (AP) — A former New York City official who helped coordinate the city’s response to the pandemic has been 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 has been terminated from his position as executive vice president and chief medical officer of 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 conferences to discuss the city’s response to COVID-19 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 became available.
A hidden camera video posted last week by a conservative podcaster shows Varma casually talking to a woman about attending meetings even while serving as the face of the city’s pandemic response.
“I did all these kinky, sexual things while I was on TV and people were like, ‘Aren’t you scared? Aren’t you ashamed?’” she said at one point in the edited recording. “And I was like, no, I really like being myself.”
Varma also acknowledged how disastrous his actions would have been for the city’s efforts if they had been exposed at the time.
“It would have been a big problem,” he said at another point in the video. “It would have been a real shame.”
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned in 2023 after a year-long government investigation revealed that he and members of his administration attended parties at government offices in violation of COVID-19 lockdown rules at the time.
California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom faced criticism for violating his own pandemic rules when he attended a friend’s birthday party at the posh French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley in November 2020.
Varma declined to comment on his firing on Tuesday but acknowledged the authenticity of the video in a statement provided by a spokesperson.
“I take responsibility for not having acted with the best judgment at the time,” he wrote, adding that the recordings were of private conversations that had been “secretly recorded, spliced, chopped up and taken out of context.”
Varma did not elaborate on the events referenced in the video, but acknowledged attending at least three private meetings during his tenure at City Hall.
Varma, in the video, said a party took place in a hotel room in August 2020 with around 8 to 10 people, including his wife, who were naked and consuming the recreational drug molly or ecstasy.
By then, New York’s governor had begun to ease restrictions, allowing indoor gatherings of up to 10 people months earlier. Varma said he still took precautions to ensure he didn’t get infected.
“I had to act with some discretion,” he said. “I was in charge of the entire COVID response in the city.”
According to the recording, she also attended a dance party with about 200 people in a space beneath a Wall Street bank in May or June 2021. By mid-May, New York state had raised the limit on indoor gatherings to 250 people, and by mid-June had lifted most pandemic restrictions.
Varma, who left his City Council post around that time but continued to work as a part-time consultant, according to his LinkedIn bio, recalled being worried about being seen at the party at the time.
“This was not COVID-friendly,” he said in the video, which appears to have been put together from recordings secretly made during several different social encounters with an unidentified woman, who is off-camera.
A spokesperson for SIGA Technologies did not respond to emails seeking comment.
Democratic Mayor Eric Adams declined to weigh in on the controversy Tuesday during his regular briefing with reporters at City Hall. Some local conservatives called for a government investigation.
“The hypocrisy is outrageous,” said Council Member Robert Holden, a Democrat from Queens, who applauded Varma’s firing. “Millions of people were affected by his authoritarian policies and the public deserves to be held accountable.”
In his statement, Varma defended his efforts to respond to the pandemic and denounced the video as part of “dangerous extremist efforts to undermine public confidence” in vaccines.
“In the face of the greatest public health crisis in a century, our top priority was saving lives, and every decision we made was based on the best available science to keep New Yorkers safe,” he wrote.
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