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Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has tested positive for COVID-19 despite multiple vaccine and booster shots.
The 81-year-old doctor is fully vaccinated and has received two boosters, according to a statement from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Fauci has mild symptoms and he’s taking Pfizer’s antiviral treatment Paxlovid.
He was recently spotted without a mask on June 11th at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.
The college renamed the science center the “Anthony S. Fauci Integrated Science Complex.”
“Each of us, in our own personal way, has to make an assessment of what risk you’re willing to accept about getting infected,” Fauci said in April. “In general, the risk is low, but I made a personal assessment. I’m 81 years old, and if I get infected, I have a much higher risk.”
“Dr. Fauci will isolate and continue to work from his home,” the statement continued. “Dr. Fauci will follow the COVID-19 guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and medical advice from his physician and return to the NIH when he tests negative.”
Fauci recently admitted there isn’t enough evidence that the COVID-19 vaccine booster dose actually lower rates of hospitalization or death in children under the age of 5.
“Right now, there’s not enough data that has been accumulated, Senator Paul, to indicate that that’s the case,” Fauci stated.
“So there are no studies. And Americans should all know this. There are no studies on children showing a reduction in hospitalization or death with taking a booster,” Senator Rand Paul said.
Paul, who is also a doctor, has argued against the vaccine’s efficacy in some cases.
Fauci was forced to testified virtually because he currently has COVID-19. He called Paul’s hypothetical “somewhat of an absurd exaggeration.”
“That’s not science. That’s conjecture. And we should not be making public policy on it,” he said.
More on this story via Fox News:
Paul recognized that “there is probably some indication” that boosters are beneficial for older people who have health risks if they get COVID-19, but that this is not the case for younger people. To the contrary, he said the vaccine could be risky for younger people. Paul pointed recent reports of an increased risk of myocarditis in males age 12 to 24 who get a second dose of a vaccine.
The Republican senator also accused the government of withholding data about pediatric COVID-19 cases. Paul was particularly interested in the number of childre
n who had previously been infected with COVID-19 who later died or were hospitalized from it.“The answer may be zero, but you’re not even giving us the data,” Paul said.
Fauci did not answer the question, but stated that the “optimal degree of protection” after infection is to then get vaccinated, referring to reinfection possibilities from the omicron variant.