Dr. Rick Bright, ousted director of key vaccine agency, to testify before House panel Thursday

Dr. Rick Bright, the ousted director of a crucial federal office charged with developing countermeasures to infectious diseases, will testify before Congress on Thursday that the US will face “unprecedented illness and fatalities” without additional preparations to curb the coronavirus pandemic.

“Our window of opportunity is closing,” Bright is expected to testify, according to his prepared remarks provided to CNN. “Without clear planning and implementation … 2020 will be (the) darkest winter in modern history.”

LIVE UPDATES: Dr. Rick Bright testifies

Bright will publicly advise the federal government to ramp up its response, a week after filing a whistleblower complaint alleging he was fired from his job leading the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority for opposing the use of a drug frequently touted by President Donald Trump as a potential coronavirus treatment.

His testimony is part of the second high-profile congressional hearing this week where the Trump administration’s response to Covid-19 pandemic — and the President’s actions — are under public scrutiny.

Before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s health subcommittee, Bright is expected to urge the Trump administration to consider a number of actions, including increasing production of essential equipment and establishing both a national test strategy and a national standard of procurement of supplies. He calls on top officials to “lead” through example and wear face coverings and social distance.

Bright, now a senior adviser at the National Institutes of Health, claims that the administration “missed early warning signals” to prevent the spread of the virus and blames the leadership of the Health and Human Services for being “dismissive” of his “dire predictions.”

Bright says that he knew the US had a “critical shortage of necessary supplies” and personal protective equipment during the first three months of the year and prodded HHS to boost production of masks, respirators, syringes and swabs to no avail. He alleges to have faced “hostility and marginalization” from HHS officials after he briefed a senior White House adviser and members of Congress “who better understood the urgency to act.”

He says that he was removed from his post at BARDA and transferred to “a more limited and less impactful position” at NIH after he “resisted efforts to promote” the “unproven” drug chloroquine.

A Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson responded that it was “a personnel matter that is currently under review” but said it “strongly disagrees with the allegations and characterizations.”

About an hour before Bright’s hearing, Trump tweeted that he had “never met” or “even heard of” Bright, but considers the NIH senior adviser a “disgruntled employee, not liked or respected by people I spoke to and who, with his attitude, should no longer be working for our government!”

Bright is seeking to be reinstated to his position as the head of BARDA. The Office of Special Counsel, which is reviewing Bright’s complaint, has determined there is reason to believe his removal was retaliatory and is recommending he be reinstated during its investigation, according to Bright’s attorneys.

“The virus is out there, it’s everywhere,” Bright plans to say. “We need to be able to find it, to isolate it and to stop it from infecting more people.”

Thursday’s subcommittee meeting comes two days after a blockbuster hearing in the Senate that featured Dr. Anthony Fauci, who leads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Fauci said that access to a vaccine in time for the fall school year would be “a bit of a bridge too far” and warning against some schools opening too soon, which Trump later called “not an acceptable answer.”

This story has been updated with additional developments Thursday.