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Two federal whistleblowers allege the Department of Health and Human Services asked them to downplay a coronavirus outbreak among migrant children staying at a Fort Bliss, Texas facility earlier this year, according to a complaint filed Wednesday.
The complaint, which was sent to four congressional committees and government watchdogs, was filed by the nonprofit Government Accountability Project on behalf of Arthur Pearlstein and Lauren Reinhold – who they claim are “officials federal career “and” whistleblowers “who” served as volunteers at the Fort Bliss emergency admission site from April to June 2021. ”
“COVID was prevalent among children and eventually spread to many employees. Hundreds of children contracted COVID under crowded conditions,” the complaint says. “Adequate masks have not been routinely provided to children, and their use has not been consistently enforced.”
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The complaint added that “regularly, when the details reached the end of their term, a sheet was distributed with detailed instructions from the HHS public affairs office on how, when asked, to make everything sound positive on the Fort Bliss experience and to minimize anything negative. ”
The complaint also said that “every effort has been made to minimize the degree of COVID infection at the site, and the extent of the outbreak has been deliberately kept under wraps.”
“At a ‘town hall’ meeting with details, a senior US public health official was interviewed and declined to say how many were infected because ‘if this graphic [of infections] go to the Washington Post every day, that’s the only thing we’ll deal with and politics will take over, perception will take over, and we’re talking about reality, not perception, ”he said .
The Fort Bliss site manager reportedly “also dismissed an employee’s concern that children in COVID tents wore basic disposable masks instead of N95 masks.”
“The official said N95 masks were not needed for those infected – although uninfected details worked with infected children,” the complaint says.
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The Government Accountability Project states that “Pearlstein was primarily assigned to work on two teams at Fort Bliss: performing clinical assessments as part of the clinical assessment team; and working with small groups and individual children within the mental health / wellness team, ”while Reinhold“ worked in the girls’ tent for the first half of its details; and, during the second half, was part of the call center team and worked in all tents. ”
Fox News has contacted the Department of Health and Human Services for comment.
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