Did Feds Working at Fairfield Quarantine Lack Coronavirus Protection? 'We'll Get Back to You'

A government whistleblower has filed a complaint alleging that some federal workers did not have the necessary protective gear or training when they were deployed to help Americans evacuated from China during the coronavirus outbreak.

The complaint deals with Department of Health and Human Services employees sent to Travis and March Air Force bases in California to assist the quarantined evacuees. The Office of Special Counsel, a federal agency that investigates personnel issues, confirmed on Thursday that it had received the unnamed whistleblower’s complaint and had opened a case.

On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the first possible community level transmission of the coronavirus in the U.S., after a woman tested positive for the virus in Solano County. North Bay congressman John Garamendi said he’s concerned that federal health workers deployed to quarantined patients at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield may have spread the novel coronavirus to the broader community.

Garamendi, who represents Solano County, is raising concerns after he said federal health officials were not able to answer questions during a briefing Friday morning about whether the federal workers at the base followed proper safety protocols.

“I then asked, ‘What about Travis? And, they said, ‘Well, we’ll get back to you about Travis.’ I said, ‘What about Travis? Can you assure us?’ They said, ‘We’ll get back to you,’ ” Garamendi told KQED.

The Solano County patient is staying at the UC Davis Medical Center. Health workers there who may have had contact with her have been isolated.

The workers at the Vacaville hospital where the patient first went have also been isolated, Garamendi said.

“We do know that 84 medical personnel at the hospital in Vacaville have been sent home through self-quarantine. They were in a situation where they could have been infected,” Garamendi said.

Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Los Angeles, said the whistleblower recently contacted his office, also alleging retaliation by higher-ups for having flagged safety issues.

“My concern from the moment I heard it is that individuals at HHS are not taking the complaints of HHS employees seriously,” Gomez said in an interview. “Their superiors are not supposed to brush them off. By retaliating against people if they do call out a problem, that only discourages other people from ever reporting violations.”

HHS said it was “evaluating the complaint.”

“We take all whistleblower complaints very seriously and are providing the complainant all appropriate protections under the Whistleblower Protection Act,” HHS spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley said in a statement.

Gomez’s office said the complaint was filed by a high-ranking official at the Administration for Children and Families, an HHS social service agency.

The whistleblower was among a team of about a dozen employees from the agency who had been deployed to help connect the evacuees with government assistance that they might qualify for to ease their return. The team was there from mid-January until earlier this month.

Although team members had gloves at times and masks at other times, they lacked full protective gear and received no training on how to protect themselves in a viral hot zone, according to a description provided by the congressional office. They also had no respirators. While helping the evacuees, team members noticed that workers from the CDC were in full gear to protect them from getting sick.

Gomez’s office said the high-ranking whistleblower complained to superiors and was given the choice of being reassigned or being fired. Gomez said as far as he knows none of the workers from the agency has become infected with the virus.

The COVID-19 illness caused by a new coronavirus that emerged in December in the Chinese city of Wuhan has stretched well beyond Asia. The global count of those infected as of Friday exceeds 83,000, with China still by far the hardest-hit country. Dozens of cases but no deaths have been confirmed in the United States.

Democratic White House hopefuls have seized on President Trump’s delayed response to the coronavirus outbreak, calling it the latest evidence of his incompetence and warning that the crisis may only deepen as a result.

Trump tweeted that “The Do Nothing Democrats” had wasted time on impeachment and “anything else they could do to make the Republican Party look bad” while defending his own response to the virus outbreak, which many across the aisle have deemed sluggish and scattershot.

Donald Trump Jr. embraced another unfounded conspiracy theory, claiming without evidence that Democrats were rooting for people to die.

“Don Junior better not get anywhere near me. This is the most outrageous thing,” Garamendi said in response. “I can assure you that there are 435 members. There is not one of us that wants a single individual to be sick.”

Without referring directly to the whistleblower’s complaint, Gomez questioned HHS Secretary Alex Azar about the situation during a congressional hearing Thursday.

“Were any of these [Administration for Children and Families] employees exposed to high-risk evacuees?” asked Gomez, adding it was his understanding that “it was kind of chaotic on the ground” when the team was sent to California.

Azar responded that he was not aware of any violation of protective practices. “Urgency does not compensate for violating isolation and quarantine protocols,” he said.

“I’d want to know the full facts and would take appropriate remedial measures,” Azar added. If one of the HHS workers had become infected, that person could then have unwittingly infected others, Gomez said.

Lawyer Ari Wilkenfeld, representing the unidentified whistleblower, said in a statement, “This matter concerns HHS’ response to the coronavirus, and its failure to protect its employees and potentially the public. The retaliatory efforts to intimidate and silence our client must be opposed.”

Oakley, the HHS spokeswoman, said the department had “nothing further to add at this time.”

The Associated Press and KQED’s Ted Goldberg and Mina Kim contributed to this report.