Whistleblower: Federal workers sent to remove Americans from Wuhan without proper coronavirus protection
by Katherine Doyle
| February 27, 2020 09:15 PM
The Trump administration reassigned and threatened to fire a whistleblower who raised concerns over federal health workers' safety. The workers were sent to greet high-risk American evacuees from the coronavirus epicenter in Wuhan, China, without proper training or appropriate protective gear, a new complaint says.
Workers had face-to-face contact with the evacuees and were potentially exposed to the virus on three occasions during the emergency public health mission, according to the complaint filed Wednesday with the Office of the Special Counsel, an established office separate from the one that was run by Robert Mueller. Some expressed concern over the lack of protective equipment. One person had "no training or experience in any federal emergency management, public health emergency response, or safety or operational protocols to run the mission."
Lawyers for the whistleblower said that, while workers did not show symptoms of infection, they were not tested.
The whistleblower is described as a senior health leader at the Department of Health and Human Services with decades of experience, according to the Washington Post, which received a redacted copy of the complaint from the whistleblower's lawyers. The whistleblower received two HHS awards from HHS Secretary Alex Azar last year and the highest performance evaluations, the whistleblower's lawyers said.
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/whistleblower-federal-workers-sent-to-remove-americans-from-wuhan-without-proper-coronavirus-protection
