Trump Pressured NIH To Promote Unproven COVID-19 Treatment, Fire Fauci: Director

The outgoing director of the National Institutes of Health has revealed he was pressured by former President Donald Trump to endorse scientifically unproven COVID-19 remedies and fire the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

In an interview with CBS News, Dr. Francis Collins, whose last day as NIH director is Sunday, said he was at odds with Trump over the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Collins said he faced off with the former president after he refused to promote unproven coronavirus medications, such as hydroxychloroquine.

“I got into a difficult place and got a bit of a talking-to by the president, but I stuck my ground," Collins said on CBS Sunday Morning. "I was not going to compromise scientific principles to just hold onto the job."

Collins also revealed that he frequently faced pressure from Republicans to fire Fauci, the head of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Fauci has been the subject of harsh criticism under the Trump administration for taking what Republicans deem as a “cautious approach” to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Can you imagine a circumstance where the director of the NIH, somebody who believes in science, would submit to political pressures and fire the greatest expert in infectious diseases the world has known just to satisfy political concerns?" Collins said.

Collins’ last day as the NIH director comes as health experts warn that the Omicron variant of coronavirus, which is said to spread 70 times faster than the Delta variant, could cause a surge of cases this winter.

A report from the World Health Organization showed that COVID-19 cases caused by the Omicron variant are doubling every 1.5 to 3 days.

During a virtual U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation event Thursday, Fauci warned that the Omicron variant could become the dominant strain in the United States within a few weeks.

As of Saturday, the U.S. was averaging 126,967 new COVID-19 cases per day. In contrast, there was only an average of 70,000 new cases per day at the beginning of November, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The United States has so far reported 50,846,828 COVID-19 infections and 806,439 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.