Barbot says city’s pandemic delays ‘cost thousands of lives’ in new doc
NEW YORK — Former city health commissioner Oxiris Barbot said her warnings to Mayor Bill de Blasio were largely ignored during the early part of the pandemic and the city’s delays in closing schools and mandating lockdowns “cost thousands of lives.”
Barbot, who served as health commissioner during the early months of the pandemic, will be one of the frontline medical leaders interviewed for a BBC special called “54 Days: America and the Pandemic,” which will premiere on March 11. The documentary will be the first time Barbot has spoken publicly about her behind-the-scenes battles with the administration that ultimately led to her departure last summer.
“There was a sense of, ‘We have the best hospital system in the country, in the world,’ ... this culture of ‘We got it, we are the bomb, we’re going to take this down, there is no virus that can conquer us,’ but I know that the science was against us, that this was going to be an uphill battle,” she told BBC, according to a preview of the episode.
Despite the mayor ultimately following much of her guidance,City Hall said Monday Barbot’s characterization was untrue.
“The idea that Dr. Barbot was pounding on the table, warning City Hall behind closed doors that tens of thousands of people would die without more aggressive action is simply false,” said City Hall spokesperson Avery Cohen. “All we wanted was a clear prognosis on when to shut down the city, and how far we had to go. She was unable to produce either.”
Barbot left her post on Aug. 4 after being largely sidelined by the mayor who brought in a senior adviser some saw as a “shadow health commissioner” and handed over contact tracing to the city’s public hospital system.
Her detractors condemned her leadership style, saying she gave mixed messages to City Hall and repeatedly assured that most cases would be mild.
“Currently, the risk for novel coronavirus in New York City remains low, while our preparedness as a city remains high,” Barbot said on Feb. 13, 2020. She also offered conflicting guidance on the importance of mask wearing and how Covid-19 was spread — though at the time little was known about the novel coronavirus.
Barbot said she was battling instincts in City Hall to not spread undue panic.
In a clip of her interview, she said through tears she “was trying to, in that early period, be deliberate about — as the city’s doctor — taking my city through what I knew was coming. And it was hard.”
Barbot did not return a request for comment.