Fauci Says Kamala Harris Was Taken ‘Out of Context’ When Saying Covid Variants Caught Administration Off Guard: ‘We Were Well Prepared’

Dr. Anthony Fauci says Vice President Kamala Harris was “taken a bit out of context” in a recent statement in which she said that the Biden administration didn’t see the Delta or Omicron Covid variants coming.

Fauci spoke to NBC’s Chuck Todd on Sunday to address rising coronavirus case numbers and the remarks President Joe Biden will deliver on the subject in the coming days. Todd concluded the interview by bringing up a series of comments Harris recently made to the Los Angeles Times, wherein she seemed to say the White House was blindsided by the emergence of new Covid variants.

“We didn’t see Delta coming,” Harris said, as reported by the Times. “I think most scientists did not — upon whose advice and direction we have relied — didn’t see Delta coming. We didn’t see Omicron coming. And that’s the nature of what this, this awful virus has been, which as it turns out, has mutations and variants.”

“Dr. Fauci, perhaps nobody could’ve seen the specific of Delta or Omicron,” Todd said, “but did you not see variants coming, or did you?”

“Yeah, I did,” Fauci answered. “And I think that the vice president’s statement was taken a bit out of context.”

Here is how Fauci interpreted Harris’ remarks for the Meet the Press audience:

I believe she was referring to the fact that the extraordinary number of mutations and amino acid substitutions, particularly with Omicron, no one had expected it that much. But we were well prepared and expected that we were going to see variants. There’s no doubt about that. But I believe that the vice president was referring to the fact…if you look at the number of mutations in Omicron, it’s unprecedented. There are about 50 of them, 30 of them in the spike protein, and about 10 to 12 of them on the receptor-binding domain. We’ve never seen anything like that before. So in that context, she was correct.

Fauci’s defense of Harris came as he was conducting a media tour across the Sunday shows to talk about the government’s response to the latest pandemic developments. Fauci also stood up for Harris during his conversation with CNN’s Jake Tapper, insisting the the VP’s remarks were directed toward “the extent of the mutations.”

Watch above, via NBC.