A proponent of using the drug hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 despite scant evidence of its efficacy has been named to a top pandemic prevention role at the Department of Health and Human Services, the Washington Post reports.

Steven J Hatfill is a virologist who served in Donald Trump’s first administration, during which he promoted hydroxychloroquine to treat the virus in the early months of the pandemic, when vaccines and treatments were not yet available. He recently started as a special adviser in the office of the director of the administration for strategic preparedness and response, which prepares the country to respond to pandemics, as well as chemical and biological attacks.

The Trump administration embraced using the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, along with other drugs such as ivermectin and chloroquine, as treatments against Covid-19, despite concerns over both their efficacy and potentially serious side-effects. In June 2020, just months after the pandemic started, the Food and Drug Administration warned against using hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine to treat Covid-19 over “reports of serious heart rhythm problems and other safety issues”, even after Trump approved ordering millions of doses of the drug for US patients from Brazil.

Last year, a study released at the onset of the pandemic that promoted hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 was withdrawn by the publisher of the medical journal.

In an interview with the Post, Hatfill defended his support of hydroxychloroquine, which remains in use to treat diseases including lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. “There is no ambiguity there. It is a safe drug,” Hatfill said, noting that “they gave the drug to the president” in 2020.

In his new job, Hatfill said he would “help get us ready for the next pandemic” and work with his agency’s scientists on achieving “complete awareness of the scientific literature, not just for influenza, bird flu or Covid but other global diseases that could represent a threat to the US”.

“It is unfortunate that the Department of Health and Human Services has hired a senior adviser whose views about some Covid-19 drugs are not grounded in the evidence,” said Robert Steinbrook, the director of the health research group for progressive non-profit Public Citizen.

“It has been established many times that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin are not effective drugs for Covid-19. Officials who help the United States prepare for pandemics and biological and chemical attacks should evaluate new medicines and vaccines based on science, not their personal views.”

Tom Inglesby, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a former appointee under Joe Biden, told the Washington Post: “My hope is that Dr Hatfill will pursue the things that are of greatest value in preparing for another pandemic, such as new medicines and vaccines.”

He noted that hydroxychloroquine “doesn’t cure Covid and has risks”.

In 2021, a Democratic-led House subcommittee investigating the pandemic response made public emails from Hatfill indicating that he was among the White House officials who looked for evidence that backed up Trump’s false claims of vote rigging following his election defeat the year prior.

Even as Covid-19 infections spiked in the final weeks of 2020, Hatfill wrote that his focus had “shifted over to the election fraud investigation”.

Before Hatfill began working for the Trump administration, he was a biodefense researcher for the army in 2001 and was named a “person of interest” in the investigation into anthrax-filled envelopes sent by mail across the country, which killed five people and made 17 others sick.

The allegations, which Hatfill denied, cost him his job, and in 2008, the justice department formally cleared him, the same year that he received $4.6m from the government to settle a lawsuit alleging the government violated his privacy rights.