COVID-19
Fauci Discusses New Testing Rules For Entering US, Says Illegal Immigrants Are ‘Different Issue’
During a press briefing on Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Chief Medical Advisor to the President, said that he is working with President Biden on new COVID-19 testing requirements for people entering the United States – but that the COVID-19 threat posed from illegal immigrants flooding across the southern border was “a different issue.”
“Dr. Fauci, as you advise the president about the possibility of new testing requirements for people coming into this country, does that include everybody?” Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked.
“The answer is yes,” Fauci responded. “Because you know that the new, the new regulation if you want to call it that, is that anybody and everybody who’s coming into the country needs to get a test within 24 hours of getting on the plane to come here.”
“But what about people who don’t take a plane and just these border crossers coming in huge numbers?” Doocy asked.
“That’s a different issue,” Fauci said. “For example, when you talk, we still have Title 42 with regard to protection at the border. So there are protections at the border that you don’t have the capability as you know, of somebody getting on a plane getting checked, looking at a passport, we don’t have that there, but we can get some degree of mitigation.”
Fauci’s comments come as illegal immigration in fiscal year 2021 hit its highest annual total ever recorded. According to data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, there have been over 30,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among illegal immigrants in custody this year.
After a two-year investigation into the COVID-19 pandemic, a congressional panel released a 520-page reporton Monday, endorsing the theory that the virus most likely originated from a laboratory accident in Wuhan, China. The pandemic has claimed 1.1 million American lives and left lasting global impacts.
The investigation, led by the Republican-controlled House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, examined the origins of the virus, the response at federal and state levels, and vaccine development efforts.
The Select Subcommittee report stated “COVID-19 most likely emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.” In support of the “lab leak” theory, the report said the subcommittee learned that the virus had a biological characteristic that is not found in nature and that data showed all COVID-19 cases stemming from a single introduction to humans.
“By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced,” the report says.
“This work will help the United States and the world prepare for, protect against, and hopefully prevent future pandemics,” said Brad Wenstrup, the panel’s chairman, in a letter accompanying the report.
Fox News notes the report mentions China’s foremost SARS research lab is in Wuhan, “which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research at inadequate biosafety levels,” and that researchers at the lab “were sick with a COVID-like virus in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market.”
Initial rumors swirled at the beginning of the pandemic that China’s wet markets, which are known for selling meat, fish, produce and exotic animals in unsanitary conditions, were the origin of the virus.
that the committee based its conclusions on over one million pages of documents, 30 interviews, and 25 meetings. Among its findings, the report concluded that U.S. funding, funneled through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), supported controversial gain-of-function research at WIV.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served as a key public health advisor during the pandemic, has been a central figure in this debate. During closed-door interviews with the committee, Fauci denied claims that he concealed information about the virus’s origins, arguing that the bat viruses studied in Wuhan could not have been transformed into SARS-CoV-2.
The report, however, concluded that COVID-19 “likely emerged because of a laboratory or research-related accident.”
Additionally, the committee criticized lockdowns, mask mandates, and social distancing measures, asserting they caused more harm than good. However, it praised Operation Warp Speed for its success in accelerating vaccine development while noting the lasting consequences of school closures on children.
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