On Monday, Aug. 22, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert who heralded the COVID-19 response for the United States amid the ongoing global pandemic, announced he will retire by the end of the year.
In a statement, Fauci clarified he is stepping down from his role as both chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden as well as his position as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). He says he will leave these roles in December 2022 to pursue the “next chapter” of his career, and that he is “not retiring.”
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Fauci, who is 81 years old, promises he will continue to put his “full effort” into his current responsibilities until the end of the year. He adds that the National Institutes of Health has some of the “most talented” scientists in the world and he believes he’s leaving this important work in “very capable hands.”
Fauci, for context, has worked on HIV/AIDS, anthrax, Ebola, Zika, West Nile virus, and of course, COVID-19.
It’s not explicitly clear what Fauci is going to work on next, but he says he wants to use what he’s learned over the course of his career to “continue to advance science and public health and to inspire and mentor the next generation of scientific leaders as they help prepare the world to face future infectious disease threats” while he still has so much energy and passion left for his work.
In speaking to The New York Times in an interview on Sunday evening, Fauci told the outlet he wants to do “some things” outside the “realm of the federal government,” provided that he’s healthy, energetic, and passionate, all of which he says he continues to be. He added to the outlet he wants to use his years of experience to “hopefully inspire the younger generation.”
He also told the outlet he’s not satisfied with where things are in terms of COVID-19, and that he’s not “happy” about an average of 400 COVID-19 deaths per day. He said he thinks we can do “much better” than that but has hope things will improve over the next few months.
We do know Fauci has mentioned stepping away from his roles in government before now; for example, in speaking to CNN earlier this summer, he told the news outlet he planned to depart at the end of Biden’s term, but the specific detail of a December departure is new.
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