Trump picks Covid lockdown skeptic to head top health agency

US President Donald Trump has chosen leading Covid lockdown skeptic Jay Bhattacharya to be the next director of a central US public health agency.

Trump said he had chosen the Stanford University-educated physician and economist to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest government-funded biomedical research unit.

Bhattacharya became the face during the pandemic of a hotly contested open letter – known as the Great Barrington Declaration – opposing widespread lockdowns.

Tuesday’s nomination rounds out Trump’s top public health team. He has already unveiled all 15 positions for his cabinet as he prepares to take office on January 20.

Earlier this month, Trump announced that he wanted former rival Robert Kennedy Jr to lead the US Department of Health. Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism has alarmed the medical community, although his calls for stricter regulation of food ingredients have won praise.

In a statement, Trump said Bhattacharya would work with Kennedy to “restore the NIH to a gold standard for medical research as they investigate the underlying causes and solutions to America’s greatest health challenges, including our crisis in chronic disease and illness.”

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 health secretary.

But it is Bhattacharya who is better known after he challenged the Public Health Institute’s response to the Covid outbreak four years ago.

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

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

Then-NIH Director Francis Collins said at the time that the Great Barrington Declaration, which came before Covid vaccines were available, was dangerous and dismissed the authors as “fringe experts”.

Bhattacharya is not the only Trump nominee to criticize US public health officials’ response to the pandemic.

Trump has also chosen Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon who opposed the Covid-19 vaccine mandate, to head the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Dave Weldon, a physician and former Republican congressman who has also cast doubt on vaccine safety, was chosen to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Kennedy and O’Neill’s health department would oversee all the agencies run by Makary, Weldon and Bhattacharya, but they all must be confirmed by the Senate.

Last week, Trump also nominated TV personality Dr. Mehmet Oz to be Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator.

Although Trump’s picks for US public health agencies have been welcomed by his allies, not all of them have won a positive reception from conservatives.

He has also nominated Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a Fox News medical contributor, to become the next surgeon general.

Her previous comments against abortion restrictions and in support of masking schoolchildren during the pandemic have angered some Trump supporters.