“But the other important thing is that if you look at the children who are hospitalized, many of them are hospitalized with Covid as opposed to because of Covid,” Fauci continued. “And what we mean by that — if a child goes in the hospital, they automatically get tested for Covid. And they get counted as a Covid-hospitalized individual. When in fact, they may go in for a broken leg or appendicitis or something like that. So it’s overcounting the number of children who are, quote, ‘hospitalized with Covid,’ as opposed to because of Covid.”

While being interviewed by MSNBC host Ayman Mohyeldin, filling in for Rachel Maddow, Fauci admitted that many of the children who are in the hospital with Covid-19 are not in the hospital because of the disease.

Sen. Ted Cruz is accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci of editing his message and engaging in “pandemic politics” on COVID-19 after the doctor’s comments on the number of children who have been hospitalized during the pandemic. 

Fauci, the chief medical adviser for the Biden administration and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, came under fire on Twitter from Cruz, R-Texas, after he said in an MSNBC interview that there is a difference between the number of children who are in the hospital with COVID-19 “as opposed to because of COVID,” reports Fox News.

“And what we mean by that: If a child goes into the hospital, they automatically get tested for COVID and they get counted as a COVID-hospitalized individual, when, in fact, they may go in for a broken leg or appendicitis or something like that. So it’s over counting the number of children who are, quote, hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID,” Fauci said in the interview.