Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the nation’s pandemic health response, will probably retire by the end of President Joe Biden’s current term in office, according to multiple reports.
The government’s top infectious disease expert, who became a household name during the COVID-19 pandemic, did not give an exact retirement date Monday during an interview from his office at the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, Maryland.
“If somebody says, ‘You’ll leave when we don’t have COVID anymore,’ then I will be 105,” Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser, told Politico. “I think we’re going to be living with this.”
Fauci, 81, has served more than five decades under seven presidents. He told the outlet he wants to help “repair the national bonds that the pandemic shredded and tamp down the partisan polarization that has turned him, and science itself, into a lightning rod.”
He said he’s prepared for attacks that might come from the House or Senate if Republicans take over in the midterm elections in November.
Fauci told CNN’s “At This Hour” on Monday that his comments were interpreted as a retirement announcement, but he just meant “that it is extremely unlikely – in fact, for sure – that I am not going to be here beyond January 2025.”
Asked whether the pandemic affected his thoughts to retire, he said, “Not at all.”
“I do want to do other things in my career, even though I’m at a rather advanced age,” Fauci told CNN. “I have the energy and passion to continue to want to pursue other aspects of my professional career, and I’m going to do that sometime. I’m not exactly sure when, but I don’t see myself being in this job to the point where I can’t do anything else after that.”
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Natalie Neysa Alund covers trending news for USA TODAY. Reach her at nalund@usatoday.com and follow her on Twitter @nataliealund.
