Fauci says he was having surgery when CDC testing changes were approved

Anthony Fauci was in the operating room under general anesthesia last Thursday when the White House coronavirus task force approved the narrowing of CDC testing recommendations to exclude asymptomatic individuals, according to CNN's Sanjay Gupta.

Why it matters: Fauci, who had vocal cord surgery last week, told Gupta that he is "concerned about the interpretation of these recommendations and worried it will give people the incorrect assumption that asymptomatic spread is not of great concern. In fact, it is."

The state of play: The Trump administration's testing czar Adm. Brett Giroir denied reports on Wednesday that top White House officials ordered the CDC to stop recommending testing for asymptomatics who have been exposed to the virus, insisting that the guidelines came from within the agency.

• “The new guidelines are a CDC action,” Giroir said. "As always, the guidelines received appropriate attention, consultation and input from task force experts, and I mean the medical and scientific experts, including CDC director Redfield."
• Giroir said that Fauci was among the health experts that worked on the guidance, which was updated on Monday with no public notice.

Between the lines: Experts have said it's important to identify infections before coronavirus symptoms kick in because it's when many individuals are believed to be the most contagious, the New York Times reports.

• Some models suggest nearly half of transmission events can be traced back to when individuals were still pre-symptomatic.