Dr. Anthony Fauci returned to lead the White House’s public messaging on COVID-19 this week after his own battle with the disease — urging Americans to again wear masks and get boosted amid the threat of waning immunity against surging new variants.
The administration’s 81-year-old chief medical adviser has been laying low since testing positive in mid-June. Now recovered, the quadruple-vaccinated infectious disease expert gave a series of interviews Tuesday to warn of surging cases sparked by the latest Omicron variant, BA.5 — and caution Americans that even those recently recovered from an infection are likely still at risk.
“The threat to you is now,” Fauci warned during a White House briefing Tuesday. “Immunity wanes, whether that’s immunity following infection or immunity following vaccine. “If you were infected with BA.1, you really don’t have a lot of good protection against BA.4/5,” he warned of the latest two Omicron strains that account for more than 80% of circulating variants last week. “We should not let it disrupt our lives,” he said, “but we cannot deny that it is a reality that we need to deal with.”