US coronavirus staff were untrained and unprotected, says whistleblower

Source: The Guardian

February 29, 2020 at 04:08

The health secretary, Alex Azar, said that his department’s staff ‘should never have been’ exposed to to evacuees from coronavirus-affected areas of China without protective clothing. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP

US health department officials were ‘improperly deployed’

The US health department sent workers to assist Americans evacuated from China because of the coronavirus outbreak without proper training or appropriate protective gear, according to a whistleblower complaint filed by a senior department official who said she faced retaliation.

The workers were “improperly deployed” to two military bases in California where Americans who had been in the center of the outbreak, Wuhan in China, were being processed, according to a complaint first reported by the Washington Post.

The whistleblower’s attorney, Ari Wilkenfeld, confirmed the Washington Post accurately described allegations made in a complaint filed to the US Office of Special Counsel (OSC) and said his law firm was hopeful the case would be investigated in a “timely and comprehensive manner”.

“This matter concerns HHS’s response to the coronavirus, and its failure to protect its employees and potentially the public,” Wilkenfeld said in an email to the Guardian. “The retaliatory efforts to intimidate and silence our client must be opposed.”

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