White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said he does not 'have an easy answer' to testing migrants who enter at the southern border, many of whom are infected with Covid-19.
'We have about 18 percent of the migrant families here, 20 percent of the unaccompanied minors, testing positive for Covid,' Fox News' Neil Cavuto claimed to Fauci on Friday. 'What do we do about that?'
'You know, Neil, I — I don't have an easy answer for that,' Fauci replied. 'I mean, obviously, Title 42 is still operable at the border trying to keep people who should not come in into the country. There is testing that is done. I'm certain it's not as extensive as we would like to see, but I have to admit, Neil, I don't have an easy answer. That — that's a very difficult problem.'
The Biden administration has tightened protocols for international travelers who come to the US legally in the face of the Omicron variant, but has not come up with a testing plan for the hundreds of thousands of migrants who arrive at the border each month.
Every traveler entering the country must be tested for Covid-19 within one day of their flight.
Fauci later admitted that the Omicron variant was likely to spread rapidly across the US 'no matter what you do to keep people out.'
Cavuto asked the chief medical advisor if coronavirus coming in through the border 'would dwarf whatever good we're trying to do at airports.'
'You know what I think is going to happen that is possibly going to make this a moot point?' he said. 'I think, give what we know about the transmissibility and likely transmissibility of Omicron … once it gets in there, it will likely, under the radar, be spreading no matter what you do to keep people out or not.'
Fauci later admitted that the Omicron variant was likely to spread rapidly across the US 'no matter what you do to keep people out'
Fauci's appearance on Fox News came a day after Politico reported he had almost entirely stopped appearing on the network since July.
Bret Baier and Cavuto had reportedly been trying to book the infectious disease expert for months but he continuously turned them down.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) does not have the resources to test
