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AFP
Rick Bright said in the hearing that he had raised problems since January.
A former senior US health official told Congress that the country could face its “darkest winter in modern history” due to the coronavirus.
Rick Bright ran the government agency trying to develop a vaccine, but was removed from office last month.
He previously said he was fired from work for expressing concern over a treatment promoted by President Donald Trump.
The American leader fired him as a “disgruntled” employee.
Bright also told the House of Representatives health subcommittee that “lives were lost” due to government “inaction” in the early stages of the outbreak.
He said he first spoke about the shortage of medical equipment in January, raising the problem to the “highest levels” of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), but “received no response.”
In other American developments:
- A total of 85,807 people have died with the coronavirus in the United States. New York State continues to have the highest number of deaths in the United States, with 27,607 deaths.
- Richard Burr, Republican Chair of the US Senate Intelligence Committee. The US said it will resign while an investigation into insider trading allegations is underway. Burr is accused of using inside information to prevent market losses from the coronavirus pandemic
- Michigan’s state legislature canceled its session Thursday after receiving death threats and facing further armed protests from right-wing groups campaigning against the blockade measures.
- Nearly a quarter of American workers now claim unemployment benefits, after the number of people seeking unemployment increased by nearly three million last week.
- President Trump, Florida’s Mar-a-Lago resort will partially reopen this weekend, but guests will need to maintain social distance, reports the American television channel CNN.
What else did Mr. Bright say?
During his testimony, Bright warned that the United States’ “window of opportunity” to deal with the coronavirus was “closing.”
“If we don’t improve our response now, according to science, I fear the pandemic will worsen and continue,” he said.
“Without better planning, 2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history.”
Bright also told the subcommittee that in January he received an email “he would never forget,” from a provider of medical-grade face masks, warning him of a serious shortage.
“He said … we have to act. And I pushed it to the highest level I could get from HHS, and I got no response.”
Bright said his removal from office was the result of his insistence that money allocated by Congress to treat the virus should be put “into safe and scientifically tested solutions, and not on medicines, vaccines and other technologies that lack merit. scientific”.
“I spoke at the time and today I testify because science, not politics or cronyism, must lead the way in fighting this deadly virus,” he added.
Why was Rick Bright removed from his position?
A whistleblower complaint, filed earlier this month, says Bright was removed from his post as director of the Advanced Biomedical Research and Development Authority (Barda) for political reasons.
Bright says it was removed shortly after the publication of an article on chloroquine, which he says was a source.
President Trump had referred to hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug, as a potential “game changer” in the treatment of Covid-19, although many experts have warned that it could be ineffective or even dangerous.
Bright’s complaint alleges that he chose to speak to a journalist because government officials “refused to listen” to his warnings.
He said he had an obligation to try to protect the public “from drugs that he believed constituted a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety.”
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