Rick Bright, former director of the Advanced Biomedical Research and Development Authority (BARDA), has filed a new complaint with a federal agency investigating government complaints, complaining that he has been relegated to a minor role in his new mission. , at the National Institute of Health.
The agency investigating these complaints had previously determined that there was “reasonable evidence” that Bright had been removed from office after trying to warn the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services earlier this year that the country was not was prepared for the coronavirus outbreak.
Bright is a specialist in influenza and infectious diseases, with 10 years of experience in the biomedical agency, in particular in vaccine development.
At the National Institute of Health he should be working on tests for coronavirus, but he claims it was blocked.
The agency that Bright led until he was transferred is a unit of the United States Department of Health and Human Services that studies measures to combat infectious diseases and bioterrorism.
Before being briefly transferred in April, Bright had had a performance appraisal that he considered his work “exceptional”.
In the initial complaint lodged in May, Bright said the drop of water that would have precipitated his departure came when he resisted efforts to flood the New York area with hydroxychloroquine, a controversial malaria drug that Trump advocated as an alternative for the treatment of Covid-19.
Bright said he advocated limiting the use of the drug to controlled environments, such as hospitals that treat patients with covid-19.
Trump has since revealed he took hydroxychloroquine, apparently to try to prevent infection, after several White House officials tested positive.
The United States Food and Drug Administration recently revoked its approval for emergency use of the drug, citing known cardiac risks and unproven benefits against coronavirus.
The use of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of covid-19 has become the subject of political debate worldwide and a cleavage in public opinion.
The chief scientist of the World Health Organization (WHO), Soumya Swaminathan, said last week that the antimalarial is not proven to prevent mortality in hospitalized covid-19 patients.
France, where a controversial doctor, Professor Didier Raoult, defended hydroxychloroquine, on May 28 banned the use of this drug against covid-19.
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed nearly 484,000 deaths and infected more than 9.5 million people in 196 countries and territories, according to a report by the France-Presse news agency (AFP).
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in central China.
After Europe succeeded China as the center of the pandemic in February, the American continent is now the one with the most confirmed cases and the most deaths.
– .
