In July 2026, a claim (archived) circulated online that Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to U.S. presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden during the COVID-19 pandemic, had a pulmonary infarct that was a side effect of a COVID-19 vaccination five months earlier.
Pulmonary infarction, also known as lung infarction, happens when lung tissue dies due to restricted blood flow. An infarct, meaning dead tissue, can be caused by clots or air bubbles in the blood vessels that supply the lungs.
One X user who spread the claim wrote, "WOW! Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just OBLITERATED Dr. Fauci for lying about the COVID vaccine, getting a PULMONARY side effect and HIDING IT from us."
Kennedy, the health and human services secretary, said of Fauci during a July 27, 2026, interview on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle" (at 3:58):
He got vaccinated, a very, very public press conference, in January of 2020 and then, five months later, he had, and this is the first time that we knew this from the diary, he had a pulmonary infarction, which is one of the adverse events the NIH, CDC and FDA have said are expected from the vaccine. He never told anybody. He got treated for it, privately, by the best doctors in America at the same time he was telling everybody that that was not an adverse event.
Social media users shared the claim and footage of Kennedy on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived) and Threads (archived). Snopes readers searched our site for information about the claim.
The claim was a mixture of true and false elements.
It was true that Fauci's doctors discovered a pulmonary infarct that Fauci wrote about in a diary on June 19, 2021, (Page 782) that was release by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in July 2026. Though Fauci's doctors also discussed other issues that came to light in a CT scan two days earlier, the pulmonary infarct was the only "definite" diagnosis from the scan.
However, though Kennedy said pulmonary infarction was a known side effect of COVID-19 vaccinations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not list this condition as a common side effect of any approved COVID-19 vaccines used in the U.S.
Kennedy also likely misspoke on the time between Fauci's vaccination and pulmonary infarct, as it was roughly six months between December 2020, when Fauci got his first COVID-19 vaccination, and June 2021.
At the time of this writing, Paul's office had redacted the section of the June 19, 2021, entry that described Fauci's pulmonary infarct. It was unclear why.
No reputable media cast doubt on the authenticity of Paul's releases at the time of this writing. We found no evidence that Fauci had publicly denied writing the excerpts that Paul's office released.
We contacted Fauci to ask whether the pulmonary infarct was connected to his COVID-19 vaccination and to confirm he wrote the diary entries Paul released. We also contacted Paul's office to ask whether it had retroactively redacted the June 19, 2021, diary entry and why. We await replies to our queries.
Fauci diary described lung CT scan in June 2021
On June 19, 2021, Fauci wrote in his diary (pages 782-783, emphasis ours):
Horrible roller coaster day – Due to some acute transient right posterior chest pain 2 days ago, Ted Li order a CT scan. - I got a call from the radiologist at Sibley hospital where I had gotten a chest CT in the morning telling me that I had a lesion in my right lower lobe that he felt was a cancer (non-small cell carcinoma). I felt like I got hit like by a Mack truck. Doctor Li quickly followed up on this and show the film to Andrew Lerner at Sibley who is a pulmonologist specializing in pulmonary nodules. Doctor Lerner felt that it was more likely an inflammatory lesion and there were multiple other lesions that were very small throughout the right lower lobe. In addition, I had a pulmonary infarct in the right lowest segment that was definite. Again, Dr. Li called David Hellmann who was with his son who is an oncologist who looked at it and said that it looks more benign then neoplastic and felt that it did not look like a non-small cell carcinoma. Finally, they showed the films via computer to Dr. Elliot Fishman who is the top radiologist at Hopkins. He agreed that it was more likely inflammatory and that the only definite thing on the film was the pulmonary infarct. He recommended a follow-up CT in three months and begin anticoagulation immediately with Eliquis.
(Office of Sen. Rand Paul, accessed via Wayback Machine)
The diary entries for September 2021 (three months later) did not mention another scan, so it was unclear how the concerns about lesions and potential cancer that Fauci's doctors voiced after the June 2021 scan were resolved.
Are pulmonary infarcts a vaccine side effect?
Kennedy and Peter McCullough, a cardiologist who contributed to the spread of misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, claimed that pulmonary infarcts and embolisms were adverse events associated with COVID-19 vaccines.
Kennedy said (at 4:15) that pulmonary infarction was a side effect that the "NIH, CDC and FDA have said are expected from the vaccine," while McCullough wrote in an article about Fauci's infarct that a pulmonary embolism, which is when a blood clot blocks a blood vessel in the lungs, was a "known side effect of mRNA COVID-19 vaccination."
The CDC does not list pulmonary embolisms or infarcts as common or "expected" side effects from COVID-19 vaccines approved for use in the U.S. The prescribing information for the three mRNA COVID-19 vaccines that are approved for use in the U.S. does not list blood clots, embolisms, or infarcts as known or common side effects. The Food and Drug Administration published the prescribing information for the vaccines in question.
When talking about blood clots caused by COVID-19 vaccines, Kennedy may have been referring to thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, a rare side effect linked with the J&J/Janssen COVID-19 vaccine. The syndrome causes blood clots and low platelets, which are cells that help with clotting. The J&J/Janssen COVID-19 vaccine has not been used in the U.S. since June 2023. Fauci reportedly received a Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccine in December 2020.
We contacted Kennedy's department to clarify his comments on Fauci's infarct and await a reply to our query.
Fauci was due to appear at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on July 29, 2026, to be questioned by lawmakers about the U.S. government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For further reading, Snopes has previously fact-checked numerous claims related to Anthony Fauci and COVID-19.