Fox Business anchor Neil Cavuto asked Dr. Anthony Fauci about the large number of illegal immigrants who are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and, the ones who go into custody, are testing positive for COVID-19.
Cavuto noted recent numbers show 18 percent of migrant families and 20 percent of unaccompanied minors are COVID positive. That statistic does not take into account the ones who have COVID-19 and are able to get away from Border Patrol or other law enforcement agencies.
"That could be up to 4,000 individuals who have COVID. What do we do about that?" Cavuto asked.
"You know, Neil, I don’t have an easy answer for that. 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’s a very difficult problem," Fauci replied.
"I’m just wondering though, would that — if those numbers are, indeed, the case, it would dwarf whatever good we’re trying to do at airports, right? Just looking at the sheer numbers," Cavuto pressed.
"Yeah, but you know what I think is going to happen that’s going to make this possibly a moot point? I think given what we know about the transmissibility and likely transmissibility advantage of Omicron, we’ve seen that the in Africa with the spikes that are going up. Once it gets in there, it will likely under the radar scheme, be spreading no matter what you do to keep people out or not," Fauci said. "That’s the way viruses work. We saw that happen with delta. I do hope that Omicron doesn’t have that kind of advantage particularly if it turns out to be serious."
Despite the documented cases of the Omicron variant being mild so far, as Fauci noted, the Biden administration has considered forcing Americans who come back from abroad to quarantine for seven days even if they test negative for COVID-19.
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