- Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House's chief medical advisor, said he'll leave before the president's term is up.
- COVID would continue to last a long time, Fauci predicted.
- He made the comments in a wide-ranging interview with Politico.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the federal government who helped lead the US COVID-19 response, will be leaving his post before the end of President Joe Biden's term, he told Politico in an interview.
Fauci has been hinting for several weeks that his time at the helm of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and as Biden's chief medical advisor will soon come to an end. He first said in a June interview with the Washington Post that the time would come "sooner rather than later,"
"[In] the last few years, particularly the stress on my body and my mind with COVID, I think I have aged," Fauci said in the Washington Post interview. "I just feel it. I'm just beaten up. I do think more now that there is a finiteness to my being."
Fauci, 81, is two years older than Biden, who has said he's planning to run for reelection in 2024.
Fauci plans to teach and write books after he leaves his post as NIAID director, and told the Washington Post he hoped his work would encourage people to go into public service.
Fauci has been with the federal government for five decades, but became a household name during the Trump administration when he did frequent media interviews to update the nation about the coronavirus.
Fauci has long been respected in the scientific community. During the pandemic, medical schools saw a surge in applications that they called "The Fauci Effect."
But Fauci often clashes with Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who saw some of his public health advice as too heavy-handed. Republicans have warned that if they gain a majority in the House or Senate in November then they'll hold oversight hearings on the federal government's response to the pandemic.
The agency Fauci leads, NIAID, is part of the National Institutes of Health and researches diseases — such as the coronavirus — to develop vaccines and treatments. With his impending retirement, Fauci told Politico that he hoped his legacy would be his response to the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s, which led to bipartisan public health achievements.
As for COVID, Fauci predicted it would linger for a long time.
"We're in a pattern now. If somebody says, 'You'll leave when we don't have Covid anymore,' then I will be 105. I think we're going to be living with this," Fauci told Politico.
In recent months Fauci has stressed that people need to make individual risk assessments in determining what activities to participate in and which to avoid. Fauci himself reported in June that he had COVID but had only mild symptoms after receiving four vaccine doses.
