The highly respected Dr. Anthony Fauci, US President Joe Biden’s chief adviser on the health crisis, has tested positive for Covid-19, the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, of which he is director, said Wednesday. The octogenarian, who has quickly become the face of the fight against the pandemic in the United States, has been vaccinated against Covid-19 and received two booster doses, the institute (NIAID) said in a press release. Your symptoms are mild.
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Anthony Fauci “will self-isolate and continue to work from home,” the statement said. It was clarified that he had recently had no contact with Joe Biden. In 2020, this doctor by training, already famous in the world of infectious diseases and the fight against AIDS but still little known to the general public, was thrust into the spotlight by joining the Presidential cell on the coronavirus when Donald Trump was at the power was . His tirelessly repeated simple messages and countless television appearances made him the comforting figure America needed.
But he, who has always carefully steered clear of politics, is beginning to become the preferred target of conservatives in the context of a very intense politicization of the health crisis in the United States. “He has been vaccinated eight times and masked four times, and the corona has still prevailed. SCIENCE!” the former president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., sneered on Twitter Wednesday. Since the emergence of Omicron, whose subvariants are at the origin of the current wave in the US, cases of infection despite vaccination have multiplied.
Anthony Fauci, 81, had previously managed to avoid contracting Covid-19 by being very careful. He recently refused to attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which turned out to be a source of infection. The United States is currently recording more than 100,000 new Covid-19 cases per day, a figure experts say is grossly underestimated, particularly because of the now widespread use of self-testing, the results of which are not necessarily communicated to authorities.