Dr. Anthony FauciAnthony Fauci Fauci Says It’s Too Early To Say If Holiday Gatherings Will Be Safe Fauci: ‘I Agree’ With Newsom’s Vaccine Mandate For California Students Sunday Programs: Democrat Stalemate Dominates MORE, the nation’s leading infectious disease specialist, is rejecting the suggestion that a recent surge in immigrants to the United States is driving coronavirus infection rates across the country.
“This is not driven by immigrants,” Fauci said Sunday during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“This is the problem within our country, in the same way that it is a problem with other countries around the world,” he said. “The idea that when you have 700,000 Americans dead and millions and millions and millions of Americans are infected, you don’t want to look outside of the problem.”
The cause of the COVID-19 infection rates, Fauci said, “is within our own country.”
“Certainly immigrants can get infected, but they are not the driving force behind this,” he added. “Let’s face reality here.”
A recent poll The Kaiser Family Foundation found that most Republicans attribute recent increases in the coronavirus, including the highly contagious delta variant, to immigrants and tourists coming from other countries to the United States.
The same poll found that Democrats are more likely to see people who refuse a COVID-19 vaccine and do not take sufficient precautions as responsible for the current increase in coronavirus cases.
Fauci, like other public health officials, has previously said that low vaccination rates in certain parts of the country are hurting the country’s recovery from the pandemic.
“Focusing on immigrants, expelling them is not the solution to an outbreak,” he said Sunday.