The city’s ex-COVID czar got the boot 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.
Dr. Jay Varma was serving as a senior health adviser to then-Mayor Bill de Blasio during COVID-19 when he and his wife put on the sex- and drug-fueled debauchery and attended a packed Wall Street rave, according to secretly recorded conversations the doctor had with a woman.
“On September 23, 2024, the Board of Directors of SIGA Technologies (NASDAQ: SIGA) terminated Dr. Jay Varma, effective immediately, other than for cause, from his position as Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of the Company,” the firm wrote in a filing to the Securties 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 critic and city Councilman Bob Holden said in a blistering statement, “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.
“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.’ “
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.’ “
He also hosted another sex party in November 2020, a source close to his camp told The Post on Monday.
Philip Hickey, the former owner of GlenPatrick’s Pub in Maspeth, Queens, who attended Monday’s rally, said “thousands of lives and businesses,” including his own, were destroyed by the pandemic and its lockdowns.
Parent Yiantin Chu said she watched her 9-year-old languish at home for over three months while trying to navigate the Education Department’s remote learning systems.
“The COVID policies that were supposed to be for ‘2 weeks only’ in the spring of 2020 upended the lives of over a million students and their families in NYC,” Chu said.
The Varma source said the doctor “technically didn’t violate the mandate.
“That’s what was taken out of context, that he was violating rules, which he wasn’t,” the source said.
Varma himself has said in a statement, “In those private conversations that were secretly recorded, spliced, diced, and taken out of context, I referred to events that transpired four years ago. Between April 2020 – May 2021, I participated in two private gatherings. I take responsibility for not using the best judgment at the time.”
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 has not reviewed the full, unedited recordings.
Siga did not respond to a Post request for comment Monday.
-Additional reporting by Matthew Sedacca
