After unexplained absence, Fox News’s Neil Cavuto tells viewers his second bout with covid landed him in ICU

“I did get covid again — but a far, far more serious strand, what doctors call covid pneumonia,” the “Your World” host said. “It landed me in intensive care for quite a while, and it really was touch and go.”

“The vaccine didn’t cause that,” said Cavuto, 63. “… My very compromised immune system did.”

Cavuto, a cancer survivor, was diagnosed in 1997 with multiple sclerosis, a disease that can cause nerve damage, and he underwent open-heart surgery in 2016.

Neither a Fox News spokeswoman nor Cavuto immediately responded to messages from The Washington Post late Monday.

Host Tucker Carlson has repeatedly cast doubt on the efficacy of the vaccines and spoken out against vaccination requirements. “Almost 4,000 people died after getting the covid vaccines,” he said in May, citing self-reported data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System in a way experts say is misleading.

Fox News commentator Tomi Lahren sided with Carlson. “I personally will not get the covid vaccine, and I personally will not be forced to get it,” she said on her Fox Nation streaming show in April. “If you want to get it, by all means, please do. If you want to wear one, two or five masks while driving or walking alone, by all means, please do.”

“Wear a mask. Distance where possible,” Fox News host Dana Perino told viewers.

But other top figures have challenged those precautions. Lahren has referred to masks as “face diapers” and called government mask mandates a “tyranny.” Host Laura Ingraham tweeted that “there is zero hard evidence of benefit” from mask-wearing. (An abundance of peer-reviewed journals show masks do curb the spread of the coronavirus.)

In October, days after announcing he had tested positive for the coronavirus for the first time, Cavuto urged his viewers to schedule a vaccine appointment if they hadn’t already.

“Take the political speaking points and toss them for now,” Cavuto said on Fox’s “MediaBuzz.” “I’m begging you — toss them and think of what’s good, not only for yourself but for those around you.”

In a statement shared by the network at the time, Cavuto said his doctors told him he would have been in a “far more dire situation” had he not received the shot, adding, “I’m surviving this because I did.”

It is unclear when Cavuto tested positive for the coronavirus a second time, but on Monday, the host said his hospitalization was a harrowing experience.

“This was scary. How scary? I’m talking, Ponderosa suddenly out of the prime rib in the middle of the buffet line scary,” Cavuto said. “That’s how scary. No matter, I’m not here to debate vaccinations for you. Just to offer an explanation for me. I owed you that.”

Jeremy Barr contributed to this report.