NYC COVID adviser brags in secret recording about drug-fueled sex parties mid-pandemic: Had to be sneaky

New York City’s former COVID czar was caught on a hidden camera boasting about having drug-fueled sex parties mid-pandemic — and admitting New Yorkers would have been “pissed” if they had found out at the time.Dr.

Jay Varma — who served as senior health advisor to then-Mayor Bill de Blasio and was tasked with running the Big Apple’s pandemic response — made the confession in secretly-recorded conversations with a so-called undercover operative from conservative podcaster Steven Crowder’s “Mug Club.”“I had to be kind of sneaky about it… because I was running the entire COVID response in the city,” Varma was filmed telling the unidentified woman on Aug.1 in what appears to be a restaurant.

The edited clips of the hidden camera footage, which were all recorded between July 27 and Aug.14 in New York, were released by Crowder on Thursday.The identity of the woman Varma was speaking to — or where he met up with her — wasn’t clear.

The nature of their relationship also wasn’t clear.Varma, who no longer works for City Hall, admitted to The Post that he “participated in two private gatherings” between April 2020 and May 2021 — but insisted the secretly recorded conversations had been “taken out of context.” In one clip recorded on Aug.

14, Varma was filmed acknowledging it would have been a “real embarrassment” for the city if he had been busted at the non-socially-distanced parties — despite saying there was no gathering restrictions at the time.“We went to some like, underground dance party… underneath a bank on Wall Street… We were all rolling, we’re all taking molly [MDMA] and everybody’s high.

And I was so happy because I hadn’t done that in like a year and a half,” he said in the clip.“But I was looking around being like, ‘F–k, I wonder if anybody sees me they’re gonna be pissed’.

Because this was not COVID-friendly,” he added.“The only way I could do this job for the city was if I ha...