Ex-NYC Indian American Covid czar fired after bragging about sex parties 

New York City’s former Indian American Covid adviser, Dr. Jay Varma, was fired from his job at a pharmaceutical firm Monday — a week after he was caught bragging about hosting sex parties and attending an underground rave at the height of the pandemic.

Varma, who was serving as a senior health adviser to then-Mayor Bill de Blasio during Covid-19, was caught bragging about attending drug-furled sex parties and a packed Wall Street rave with his wife, in secretly recorded conversations the doctor had with a woman.

Varma was terminated from his position as executive vice president and chief medical officer at SIGA Technologies, the New York-based pharmaceutical company disclosed in a filing Monday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

“Pursuant to the terms of his employment agreement, Dr. Varma’s service on the Company’s Board of Directors also automatically ended effective immediately,” said the filing, which is required when an event occurs that is deemed to affect public-company shareholders.

Varma declined Tuesday to comment on his firing, but acknowledged the authenticity of the video in a statement provided by a spokesperson. “I take responsibility for not using the best judgment at the time,” he wrote, adding that the recordings were from private conversations that had been “secretly recorded, spliced, diced, and taken out of context.”

READ: NYC Indian American Covid czar brags about sex parties during pandemic (September 23, 2024)

Varma critic and city Councilman Bob Holden said in a blistering statement as reported by the New York Post, “Dr. Jay Varma’s firing is a step in the right direction, but the consequences for his actions are long overdue.”

“Varma boasted about harassing people into submission over the vaccine mandate and admitted to participating in illegal sex parties, all while he, former Health Commissioner Dr. David Chokshi, and then-Mayor Bill de Blasio imposed draconian measures that shut down the entire city,” the Queens Democrat said. “The hypocrisy is outrageous.”

Varma’s seamy chats — which included him boasting, “I did all this deviant, like sexual stuff,” and, “I had to be kind of sneaky about it … because I was running the entire Covid response in the city” — were made public last week by conservative podcaster Steven Crowder.

His firing came as enraged city business owners and parents joined lawmakers on the steps of City Hall on Monday to rally against the randy doctor, saying that while they were masking up, keeping their kids home from school and taking other precautionary measures against deadly Covid — under his instruction — he was getting up close and personal with throngs of people, according to the Post.

“While grandmothers took their last breaths alone on cold hospital beds, Dr. Varma was fulfilling his sick fantasies with hundreds of sweaty strangers,” city Councilwoman Inna Vernikov (R-Brooklyn) raged.

Michael Kane of Teachers for Choice said, “What disgusts me the most was hearing Varma say having drug-fueled group sex orgies was necessary for him to be his ‘authentic self’ because Covid had him ‘pent up.’”

Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, declined to wade into the controversy Tuesday during his regular City Hall briefing with reporters, AP reported. Some local conservatives called for a government inquiry.

Varma said at one point on the tape, “My wife and I had one with our friends in August [2020] of like that first summer.”

“So we rented a hotel … we all took, like, you know, molly [MDMA] and like it was like eight or nine or us, eight to 10 of us were in a room and everybody had a blast because everybody was like so pent up.”

He said of the June 2021 rave, which hundreds of partygoers attended, “People were like, ‘Aren’t you afraid? Aren’t you embarrassed?’ and I was like, ‘No, actually, I’m like, I love being my authentic self.’”

The edited clips of Varma were filmed on a hidden camera and were recorded between July 27 and Aug. 14 in New York. The Post said it has not reviewed the full, unedited recordings.