Sen. Ted Cruz is accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci of editing his message and engaging in "pandemic politics" on COVID-19 after the doctor's comments on the number of children who have been hospitalized during the pandemic.
Fauci, the chief medical adviser for the Biden administration and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, came under fire on Twitter from Cruz, R-Texas, after he said in an MSNBC interview that there is a difference between the number of children who are in the hospital with COVID-19 "as opposed to because of COVID," reports Fox News.
"And what we mean by that: If a child goes into the hospital, they automatically get tested for COVID and they get counted as a COVID-hospitalized individual, when, in fact, they may go in for a broken leg or appendicitis or something like that. So it’s over counting the number of children who are, quote, hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID," Fauci said in the interview.
Cruz retweeted the clip and said, "Now Fauci says this? Is this because pandemic politics have changed for the Biden admin?"
The doctor's comments came after a record surge of children in the United States were "hospitalized with COVID."
An average of 378 children ages 17 and younger were admitted with COVID to hospitals, a jump from 66% the week before.
The Biden administration is also facing new criticism over how the omicron outbreak is being handled. This week, President Joe Biden told the nation's governors that there is no "federal solution" for the pandemic, but instead, "this gets solved at a state level."
"Ultimately gets down to where the rubber meets the road, and that’s where the patient is in need of help or preventing the need of help," the president said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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