Former NYC Covid Czar Jay Varma fired after news surfaced of sex parties during pandemic

Dr. Jay Varma, the city's controversial former COVID commissioner, was fired from his post as executive vice president and chief medical officer at SIGA Technologies after reports emerged that Varma attended a sex party and a rave party during the COVID lockdowns.

News of Varma's firing, announced Monday in a filing with the SEC, comes just days after videos of Varma, City Hall's chief health adviser under Mayor Bill de Blasio, were posted Thursday by conservative podcaster Steven Crowder.

“On September 23, 2024, the Board of Directors of SIGA Technologies, Inc. (the “Company”) terminated Dr. Jay Varma from his position as Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of the Company, effective immediately and without cause,” the SEC filing states.

In the videos, Varma is seen presumably dating a woman, describing a sex party he and his wife hosted at a hotel and a dance party under a bench that he attended.

The irony of these admissions fueled the story even further.

Varma played a leading role in setting the city's policies for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic from April 2020 to May 2021. New York City was particularly hard hit, with tens of thousands of people losing their lives.

A high-ranking official in charge of the city's efforts to eradicate COVID by encouraging vaccinations, social distancing and mask-wearing, he rose to national notoriety when he implemented vaccine mandates that, among other things, prevented Kyrie Irving from attending Nets home games. About 1,500 NYC employees lost their jobs for refusing to get vaccinated.

“The only way I could do this job for the city is if I could let off steam every now and then,” he told the woman off-camera at one point in the video.

Chris Vlasto, a representative for Varma, clarified that Varma attended two sex parties in August 2020 and November 2020, noting that this did not violate any official guidelines at the time.

In a statement issued shortly after the videos surfaced, Varma said his conversations with the woman had been “secretly recorded, edited, fragmented and taken out of context” and acknowledged that he took responsibility for “not exercising his best judgment at the time.”

“In the face of the greatest health crisis of the century, our top priority was saving lives, and every decision was based on the best available science to keep New Yorkers safe,” Varma said. “I stand by my efforts to get New Yorkers vaccinated against COVID-19 and oppose dangerous extremist efforts to undermine public confidence in the need for and effectiveness of vaccines.”

Varma was widely criticised as a hypocrite because of the discrepancy between his public messages and his dazzling private life.

“The firing of Dr. Jay Varma is a step in the right direction, but the consequences for his actions are long overdue,” said conservative City Councilman Robert Holden in a statement. “Varma bragged about harassing people into submission to the vaccine mandate and admitted to attending illegal sex parties while he, former Health Commissioner Dr. David Chokshi and then-Mayor Bill de Blasio imposed draconian measures that shut down the entire city,”

The council's conservative Common Sense Caucus, of which Holden is co-chair, used the controversy to hold a press conference at City Hall on Monday calling for the reinstatement of city employees who lost their jobs for refusing to be vaccinated.

“We got it right… We were right and they were wrong,” said Councilwoman Vickie Paladino, adding that there is “a lot more hypocrisy to overcome.”

Varma left city government to become director of the Cornell Center for Pandemic Prevention and Response at Weill Cornell Medical College and joined SIGA, a pharmaceutical company, in fall 2023.

Neither representatives of SIGA nor Varma himself immediately responded to requests for comment.

Originally published: September 23, 2024 at 17:42