Ousted HHS official Rick Bright, in written testimony, says officials were 'dismissive' of his coronavirus warnings

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A former government scientist who filed a whistleblower complaint claiming he was removed from his post for disagreeing with the Trump administration’s response to coronavirus said that officials at the Department of Health and Human Services were “dismissive” of his warning about the contagion and said that if the government doesn’t follow his guidance “2020 will be the darkest winter in modern history.”

In written testimony submitted a day before he is set to appear before the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee, Rick Bright -- the former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority – criticized HHS leadership for their response to the pandemic and claimed that he was relegated to a lower position because he disagreed with the Trump administration’s push to tout “drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit.”

“I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest funding allocated to BARDA [the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority] by Congress to address the COVID-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit,” Bright wrote in his testimony.

He added: “HHS leadership was dismissive about my dire predictions about what I assumed would be a broader outbreak and the pressing need to act, and were therefore unwilling to act with the urgency that the situation required.”

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BARDA, which Bright had until recently been the head of, is the HHS office responsible for procurement and development of countermeasures to everything from pandemic influenzas and emerging diseases to bioterrorism.

In his whistleblower complaint, Bright says he was demoted because he would not permit the widespread use of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug that the president touted as being effective in treating patients with COVID-19.

An analysis of the use of the drug last month to treat COVID-19 patients in U.S. veterans hospitals found no benefit to using the drug and that there were more deaths among those given hydroxychloroquine versus standard care.

The nationwide study was not a rigorous experiment. But with 368 patients, it’s the largest look so far at hydroxychloroquine with or without the antibiotic azithromycin for COVID-19.

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Last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned doctors against prescribing the drug except in hospitals and research studies. In an alert, regulators flagged reports of sometimes fatal heart side effects among coronavirus patients taking hydroxychloroquine or the related drug chloroquine.

The decades-old drugs, also prescribed for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, can cause a number of side effects, including heart rhythm problems, severely low blood pressure and muscle or nerve damage.

Bright alleges in the complaint that political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services had tried to promote hydroxychloroquine “as a panacea.” The officials also “demanded that New York and New Jersey be ‘flooded’ with these drugs, which were imported from factories in Pakistan and India that had not been inspected by the FDA,” the complaint says.

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But Bright opposed broad use of the drug, arguing the scientific evidence wasn’t there to back up its use in coronavirus patients. He felt an urgent need to tell the public that there wasn’t enough scientific evidence to support using the drugs for COVID-19 patients, the complaint states.

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Bright also said the Trump administration rejected his warnings on COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. He said he “acted with urgency” to address the growing spread of COVID-19 after the World Health Organization issued a warning in January. In his testimony, Bright issues a dire warning that the pandemic could reemerge if other measures are not implemented.

“If we fail to develop a national coordinated response, based in science, I fear the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged, causing unprecedented illness and fatalities,” he wrote. “While it is terrifying to acknowledge the extent of the challenge that we currently confront, the undeniable fact is there will be a resurgence of the COVID-19 this fall, greatly compounding the challenges of seasonal influenza and putting an unprecedented strain on our health care system.”

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He added: “Without clear planning and implementation of the steps that I and other experts have outlined, 2020 will be the darkest winter in modern history.”

Bright’s comments sharply contrast those of the president, who has said that any reoccurrence of the contagion in the fall or winter of 2020 will be the “embers” that can easily be contained. Other government public health officials, however, have warned that strict cautions will still need to be taken throughout the summer and fall to prevent a second wave of infections.

Fox News’ Jason Donner and The Associated Press contributed to this report.