Speaking on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Anthony Fauci said that unvaccinated children will need to continue to wear masks if they interact with “groups or multiple households.”
Fauci, who is President Biden’s chief medical adviser and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned parents that they should still be concerned that their children could catch the virus while interacting with other children.
“The children can clearly wind up getting infected,” Fauci told CBS anchor Margaret Brennan. “When the children go out into the community, you want them to continue to wear masks when they’re interacting with groups or multiple households.”
When asked about the idea of children returning to camps or playgrounds this coming summer, Fauci said that it was “conceivable that will be possible.”
“We now have 3 to 3.5 million vaccinations each day. If we keep up with that pace, invariably, that’s going to drive the rate and the level of infections per day to a much, much lower level,” Fauci said, continuing to argue that lower COVID-19 infection rates would allow “good degree of flexibility during the summer … with things like camps.”
Last week, The Daily Wire reported that “Dr. Robert Redfield, the former director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told CNN’s chief medical correspondent in an interview that he believes the novel coronavirus pandemic originated from a lab in Wuhan, China.”
Redfield, who served under former President Donald Trump for four years, told CNN correspondent Sanjay Gupta, “the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory.” The virologist added: “Other people don’t believe that, that’s fine, science will eventually figure it out.”
During his interview with Face the Nation, Fauci appeared to contradict Dr. Redfield, saying that the virus likely adapted in nature.
“It’s entirely conceivable that it was spreading considerably for weeks, if not months, before we recognized it at the end of December, giving it plenty of time to adapt to a human,” Fauci said. “The other theory that people have is that somehow it did that in a lab and it accidentally escaped.”
“I mean, those are just varying opinions,” he continued. “I think the most likely one that in nature, in the wild, it adapted itself.”
Regarding a pending report from the World Health Organization regarding an investigation in Wuhan and the origins of COVID-19, “Fauci refused to take a firm stance on the report, saying there was ‘a lot of conjecture’ around the imminent release and that he would ‘like to see the report first,’” according to Fox News.
“I’d like to take a really close look at that,” Fauci said. “If, in fact, obviously there was a lot of restrictions on the ability of the people who went there to really take a look, then I’m going to have some considerable concern about that.”
“But let me take a look at the report first,” he clarified.