A government whistleblower alleged that the Department of Health and Human Services sent workers to help evacuees from Wuhan, China — the epicenter of the coronavirus — without giving them proper protective gear or training.

According to The Washington Post and The New York Times, the whistleblower is a senior HHS official based in Washington, DC.

The person said workers were sent to two bases in California to assist in processing American evacuees from China without being trained in safety protocol and without adequate protection.

The first case of a US patient becoming infected with coronavirus through "community spread" took place near one of those bases earlier this week.

The whistleblower alleged that they were unfairly reassigned and threatened with termination after flagging their concerns to senior HHS officials, including those who work for HHS Secretary Alex Azar.

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A whistleblower from the Department of Health and Human Services has alleged that the US sent more than a dozen government workers to assist Americans who were evacuated from Wuhan, China, without giving them proper training or protective gear, The Washington Post and The New York Times reported on Thursday.

The whistleblower is a senior HHS official based in Washington, DC, and oversees employees at the Administration for Children and Families unit within the federal agency, according to The Post and The Times.

Wuhan is the epicenter of the global coronavirus outbreak, which has infected 82,000 people — most of them in mainland China — and killed 2,800.

The World Health Organization said on Thursday that the outbreak could become a pandemic, and US public-health officials announced this week they expected it to spread throughout the country.

Lawyers for the whistleblower told The Post that the workers sent to help American evacuees did not show symptoms of the infection and have not been tested for the virus.

The Times, which obtained a portion of the complaint that was submitted to the Office of the Special Counsel, reported that the team sent to assist the evacuees was "improperly deployed" to two military bases in California to aid in processing the Americans, who were evacuated from China and elsewhere.