Fauci advised Roy Cooper to delay NC school opening in 2020. Will it matter now?

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A June 2020 diary entry from Dr. Anthony Fauci in which he mentions advising then-Gov. Roy Cooper to delay a decision on reopening schools has become a campaign issue in this year’s U.S. Senate race.

Fauci’s COVID-era diary includes an entry about a 45-minute conversation with Cooper on June 29, 2020 — two days before the governor delayed an announcement on school reopening. The 1,141-page diary was released by U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) ahead of Fauci’s testimony before a Senate committee in July.

Fauci, who at the time was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Cooper had called him about his “dilemma” whether to reopen schools. Fauci has become a target of some Republicans seeking to open federal and state investigations into his handling of the pandemic.

“He was agonizing since he wanted to do the right thing,” Fauci wrote in his diary. “Since this is the first decision among Governors regarding opening for the Fall term, he feels that he will be the example. … I recommended that he delay decision for 2 weeks.”

Michael Whatley, a Republican from Gastonia, is pointing to the diary entry in his campaign against Cooper, a Democrat from Raleigh. They’re vying to replace retiring Republican Thom Tillis in the U.S. Senate

“It will take at least a generation for North Carolina to recover from the learning loss suffered because of Governor Cooper’s stupid decision to shut down North Carolina schools,” Whatley Campaign Spokesman DJ Griffin said in a statement Friday. “And now we find out the reason he kept refusing to reopen the schools is because Cooper is a Fauci Fanboy.

“Cooper’s COVID response was one bad decision after another and voters should hold him accountable in November.”

Cooper’s campaign downplayed the significance of the diary entry.

“The pandemic was a challenging time and Governor Cooper worked with many federal and state public health experts to use the information available at the time to make the best decisions possible to keep people alive and safe,” a spokesperson for the Cooper campaign said in a statement Friday.

Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, questioned how much of an impact Roy Cooper talking with Fauci will have on voters six years later. Chris Cooper is not related to Roy Cooper.

“Roy Cooper’s not going to show up on a campaign stump with Anthony Fauci by any stretch of the imagination,” Chris Cooper said in an interview Friday with The News & Observer. “But he’s not as toxic as some members of the Democratic Party network, right?

“I’m sure if you did public opinion polling on Fauci, you’d find very low numbers among Republicans, fairly high numbers among Democrats, and a lot of agnosticism among unaffiliateds.”

Cooper had ordered North Carolina schools to close as of March 16, 2020, to try to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Cooper had been expected to announce at a July 1 news conference which reopening plan schools could use.

But a day after his call with Fauci and the night before the July 1 press conference, Cooper announced he was going to delay a school announcement.

Following Fauci’s advice, Cooper waited two weeks. On July 14, Cooper announced that schools could reopen for in-person instruction on reduced capacity with moderate social distancing or use remote instruction.

Most North Carolina students would have limited or no in-person instruction for the 2020-21 school year.

The latest round of North Carolina school test scores will be released on Wednesday. So far, test scores are still largely below pre-pandemic levels in North Carolina and nationally.

Conservative websites have said that news of the June 2020 Fauci-Cooper conversation is new. But media outlets reported it back in 2020.

WRAL reported in August 2020 that the state Department of Health and Human Services had recommended allowing schools to reopen at full capacity with minimal social distancing. Then WRAL said Cooper, his senior adviser Julia White and then-DHHS Secretary Mandy Cohen talked with Fauci on June 29.

White told WRAL that Fauci advised them “I would just delay that” announcement on school reopening.

Cohen recalled the same June 29 recommendation from Fauci in an August 2020 interview with WBTV.

“This is not new information, and it’s not going to fundamentally change the shape of the election,” said Chris Cooper. “But I think it’s another piece of evidence that Michael Whatley is going to use to argue that Roy Cooper was responsible for decisions during COVID that not every North Carolinian agreed with.”

This story was originally published August 28, 2026 at 4:51 PM with the headline “Fauci advised Roy Cooper to delay NC school opening in 2020. Will it matter now?.”