Fauci discusses life after COVID-19 pandemic

May 1, 2023

WASHINGTON (DC News Now) — The national emergency for COVID-19 ends May 11. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the man regarded as being at the forefront of the U.S. response to the pandemic, believes we can start to focus on life before the pandemic.

“I think we cautiously can begin to approach normality,” Fauci said Sunday in Georgetown.

However, Fauci warns Americans to be on guard.

“Historically, we have been fooled before,” said Fauci. “If you turn the clock back, and look at 2021, in the spring when we thought the levels were going very well down, and then the Delta variant came up and we had a lot of cases in the United States.”

Fauci again urged people to protect themselves from COVID-19.

“The best way to prevent any kind of resurgence is to get people vaccinated,” said Fauci.

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One of his biggest regrets is that more people have not heard him.

“Within the United States, we only have 69%-70% of our population has received any vaccination,” Fauci said. “Only about, less than 20% have received the BA45 booster.”

Fauci stepped down at the end of 2022 as the chief medical advisor to the President of the United States after one year in the position. Last year also saw him retire from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIAID, which he lead since 1984.

Fauci joined the head of Israel’s Sheba Medical Center Sunday as the two discussed the establishment of the Sheba Pandemic Preparedness Research Institute. Fauci signed an agreement with the medical center to create the institute before he left the NIAID.

“Whereas the collaboration that we have with the United States particularly, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Sheba, is something where the information is readily exchanged in real time,” Fauci said. “That’s one of the things that’s critically important when you’re trying to respond in an optimal way to an emerging outbreak.”

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The institute will help share information about infectious diseases between the two nations that often worked together during the pandemic.

“In the United States, we found a friend,” said Professor Yitshak Kreiss, director general of Sheba Medical Center. “A person that could integrate science, medicine, with leadership and decision making.”

The medical center also presented Fauci its Champion of Global Human Health Award, for his work to help both nations during the pandemic.

Source: DC News Now