President Trump names coronavirus lockdown skeptic as top health official

US President-elect Donald Trump has selected Jay Bhattacharyya, a leading COVID-19 lockdown skeptic, to be the next head of a major US public health agency.

President Trump said he has chosen the Stanford University-trained physician and economist to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world's largest government-funded biomedical research organization.

Mr. Bhattacharya has become the face of a hotly debated pandemic in which his open letter against large-scale lockdowns (known as the Great Barrington Declaration) is being debated.

Tuesday's nominations complete President Trump's top public health team. He has already announced all 15 cabinet positions ahead of his inauguration on January 20th.

Earlier this month, President Trump announced he wanted his former rival Robert Kennedy Jr. to lead the U.S. Department of Health. President Kennedy's vaccine skepticism worried the medical community, but his advocacy for tighter regulation of food ingredients won praise.

President Trump said in a statement that Bhattacharyya will work with Kennedy to “lead the NIH to the forefront of medical research as we investigate the root causes and solutions to America's greatest health problems, including the chronic disease and disease crisis.” “We're going back to the gold standard.”

Bhattacharya posted on X (formerly Twitter) that she was “humbled” to have been selected.

“We will make America's scientific institutions trustworthy again and deploy the achievements of great science to make America healthy again!” he wrote.

On Tuesday, the president-elect also nominated Jim O'Neill, a former federal health official and close ally of conservative donor Peter Thiel, to be deputy secretary of the Department of Health.

But it is Mr Bhattacharya who has become more widely known since four years ago when he challenged public health agencies' response to the coronavirus outbreak.

In October 2020, Mr Bhattacharya co-authored an open letter known as the Great Barrington Declaration calling for alternatives to lockdowns and recommending that the focus should instead be on protecting vulnerable populations such as the elderly. did.

He remains a vocal critic of how Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of the NIH, has handled the pandemic.

Francis Collins, the NIH director at the time, said the Great Barrington Declaration, which was issued before a coronavirus vaccine was available, was dangerous and dismissed the authors as “fringe experts.”

Bhattacharya is not the only Trump candidate to criticize the U.S. public health agency's response to the pandemic.

President Trump also nominated Johns Hopkins University surgeon Marty McCurry, who opposed mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations, to head the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Dave Weldon, a physician and former Republican congressman who has also questioned the safety of vaccines, was chosen to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Mr. Kennedy and Mr. O'Neill's Health Department will oversee the agencies run by Mr. McCulley, Mr. Weldon and Mr. Bhattacharyya, but all five must be approved by the Senate.

President Trump last week nominated TV personality Dr. Mehmet Oz to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

While President Trump's picks have been widely welcomed by allies, not all of them have received positive reviews from conservatives.

He also named Dr. Janet Neshewat, a Fox News medical contributor, to be the next surgeon general.

But her previous comments opposing abortion restrictions and supporting schoolchildren wearing masks during the pandemic have angered some Trump supporters.