Fauci Says New COVID Testing Requirements for People Entering Country Do Not Apply to Illegals
Dr. Anthony Fauci — the Biden administration’s point man for its coronavirus response — confirmed that new testing requirements for those entering the country will not include those apprehended at the southern border.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases made a rare appearance in the White House briefing room on Wednesday to discuss the new omicron variant of the virus.
Fauci discussed the stricter testing requirements the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering, including getting a negative COVID-19 test result 24 hours before an international flight to the U.S., instead of the current three days, and taking another test within three days of arriving in the country.
President Joe Biden announced Thursday that his administration was adopting the 24-hour negative testing requirement for international flights.
Fauci also defended the travel ban the president put in place for eight African nations, acknowledging that it will not “prevent people who are infected from coming to the United States, but we needed to buy some time to be able to prepare, understand what’s going on — what is the nature of this infection, what is the nature of the transmissibility.”
Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy asked Fauci if the new testing requirement covers “everybody.”
“The answer is yes,” Fauci responded. “Because you know that the new — the new regulation, if you want to call it that, is that anybody and everybody who’s coming into the country needs to get a test within 24 hours of getting on the plane to come here.”
Doocy followed up by asking, “But what about people who don’t take a plane and just — these border crossers coming in in huge numbers in a sense?”
Fauci said the new testing requirement would not apply to those individuals.
“You know, but that’s a different issue. For example, when you talk — we still have Title 42, with regard to protection at the border,” he said.
Doocy on travelers being checked for COVID before entering America: “What about people who don’t take a plane and just these border crossers coming in huge numbers?”
Fauci: “That’s a different issue.” pic.twitter.com/2SvNuwk41S
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) December 1, 2021
Title 42 is a section of the Public Health and Safety Act invoked during the Trump administration that empowers the federal government to deny entry to those seeking to come into the U.S. or remove those who have come into the country due to the pandemic.
The Biden administration has continued the policy, making exceptions for parents with children and unaccompanied minors, NPR reported.
“So there are protections at the border — that you don’t have the capability, as you know, of somebody getting on a plane, getting checked, looking at a passport. We don’t have that there. But we can get some degree of mitigation,” Fauci said.
He added that there is limited “testing at the border under certain circumstances.”
Customs and Border Protection reported that there were over 164,000 apprehensions at the southwest border in October. During the fiscal year 2021, there were a record 1.7 million.
According to Border Patrol, in the fiscal year 2020, when worldwide travel was greatly restricted, hundreds of people from African nations were apprehended at the southwest border, including 267 from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 203 from Ghana, 63 from Eritrea and six from South Africa.
A version of this article originally appeared on Patriot Project.
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