US President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Jai Bhattacharya, a prominent Covid lockdown skeptic, as the next director of a key US public health agency.

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

Bhattacharya became the face of a highly controversial open letter during the pandemic – known as the Great Barrington Declaration – which opposed widespread lockdowns.

Tuesday’s nomination rounded out Trump’s top public health team. He has already revealed 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 run the US Health Department. Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism has worried the medical community, although his call for strict regulation of food ingredients has won praise.

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

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

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He remains a vocal critic of how Anthony Fauci, the 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 the response of US public health agencies to the pandemic.

Trump has also chosen Marty Macri, a Johns Hopkins surgeon who opposed COVID-19 vaccine mandates, to run the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

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

Kennedy’s Department of Health would oversee all agencies run by McCreary, Weldon, and Bhattacharya, but all of them must be confirmed by the Senate.

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

While Trump’s choices for US public health agencies have been widely welcomed by his supporters, not all of them have received a positive reception.

He has also nominated Fox News medical contributor Dr. Janet Neshivat to be the next surgeon general.

His past comments opposing abortion restrictions and supporting requiring schoolchildren to wear masks during the pandemic have upset some Trump supporters.