Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House pandemic task force member and top infectious diseases expert, said he underwent surgery to remove a growth from his vocal cord.
“He’s now home and resting,” a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases spokesperson told NPR. “Expect him to be completely resting his voice at least through the weekend.” Fauci is in charge of the agency.
He told CNN that he had surgery for a polyp, described by medical experts as an abnormal tissue growth, had to undergo general anesthesia but is now fine.
“Doctors have advised him to curtail his talking for a while to allow his vocal cords to recover,” CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta wrote, citing what Fauci told him.
He has previously addressed his vocal cord issues in April, saying that “that when you get your voices damaged a little—I probably have a polyp there—the only way to get better is to keep your mouth shut.”
Fauci has been frequently speaking to news outlets and giving live interviews since the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic started.
It’s not clear how long it would take for him to recover from the surgery.
The White House has not responded to a request for comment.
On Wednesday, Fauci said in a video talk that the U.S. government would not make any future COVID-19 vaccines obligatory for the general public. However, some state and local governments could do so.
“You don’t want to mandate and try and force anyone to take a vaccine. We’ve never done that,” he said. “You can mandate for certain groups of people like health workers, but for the general population you can’t,” Fauci remarked.
Fauci further noted that a mandatory vaccine would be “unenforceable and not appropriate.”
Some states like New York have made vaccines for measles and other diseases mandatory for children attending public schools or daycares.
In the same talk, Fauci said virtual classrooms would be better in parts of the country with an infection rate of 10 percent.
Fauci said that the default position should be to try and reopen schools for the psychological health of children, but added that a unilateral approach to reopening schools could not be taken.
“To make a statement on one side vs the other and take the country as a whole won’t work—we’re so heterogeneous with the infections,” Fauci said.
The United States has more than 5 million cases of CCP virus infections, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Reuters contributed to this report.
