It is "ridiculous" to suggest that Dr. Anthony Fauci was not part of the discussions on changing the Centers for Disease Control's guidelines on testing for coronavirus, Marc Short, the chief of staff for Vice President Mike Pence, said Thursday, while accusing reports suggesting otherwise as a "conspiracy theory."
"I think I heard you put out a conspiracy theory, like a Tom Clancy novel," Short told CNN "New Day" co-host Alisyn Camerota. "He had the opportunity on multiple occasions to weigh in because we discussed this."
There were "multiple sessions" in which the matter of testing was discussed, said Short, and a "paper document circulated for weeks before it finally came out."
Fauci is recovering from surgery for a throat polyp and said he was under anesthesia when the CDC's decision was announced that asymptomatic people need not be tested for the virus. He also said he was "not part of any discussion or deliberation regarding the new testing recommendations."
A spokesperson for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of which Fauci is the director, agreed in an NBC News interview that Fauci briefly saw the new guidelines before they were put in place, but did not realize their significance until later.
Camerota told Short that Fauci himself said he had been under anesthesia, and Short agreed that the doctor was in surgery "when the final meeting happened, that's absolutely true."
Meanwhile, Fauci is "recovering well" and will be at Thursday afternoon's meeting of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said Short.
He also denied that the CDC's new rule lessens the number of coronavirus tests that will be conducted.
"The testing is a remarkable story in our country," said Short, noting that when Pence took control of the task force in February, just 8,000 tests had been conducted overall and now, more than 800,000 are being conducted every day, and over 80 million have been done in the United States, or "more than 6 times than any country in the world."'
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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