Dr. Jay Varma, who was in charge of New York City’s response to Covid-19, is out of a job after he admitted to violating his own guidance during the pandemic. 

According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Monday, pharmaceutical SIGA Technologies said it had fired Dr. Varma from his job as the company’s executive vice president and chief medical officer.

The termination comes days after conservative podcaster Steven Crowder published a video of Dr. Varma, who was a senior public health adviser to Mayor de Blasio from April 2020 to May 2021, discussing his party life during the pandemic while he was in charge of New York City’s response to the virus.

The former public health official did not deny the authenticity of the clips, but said they had been “spliced, diced and taken out of context.”

He also insisted that he was “targeted by an operative for an extremist right-wing organization determined to malign public health officials and take down the public health system in America.” 

In the video shared by Mr. Crowder, the former public health official is seen admitting he attended sex and dance parties during the pandemic.

“We went to some, like underground, like dance party, like underneath a bank in Wall Street, and we are rolling, we were all taking molly, and everybody’s high. And I was so happy because I hadn’t done that in like a year and a half,” Dr. Varma said in one part of the montage. 

In a later part of the montage, Dr. Varma discussed a sex party he went to in a hotel in the summer of 2020 with about “eight to 10 of us” when the pandemic restrictions were still in place and elaborated on how he enjoyed the idea of “bodies being close to each other,” and “just being like naked with friends.”

The comments in the video montage led local officials to express outrage over what they saw as hypocrisy by a former top health official and call for investigations into his behavior. 

Dr. Varma was key in crafting the city’s vaccination policy and a regular fixture at Covid briefings.