Renowned immunologist Anthony Fauci, the chief adviser on COVID-19 to US Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, announced on Monday that he will leave his official duties in December this year, AFP and Agerpres inform.

At the age of 81, Anthony Fauci has announced that he will also step down as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in the United States, a position he has held for 38 years, but noted that for him, it is still not about ” pension”.

“I intend to pursue the next phase of my career with all the energy and passion I have left in my field,” the American doctor said in a statement.

President Joe Biden immediately expressed “(his) deep gratitude” to Dr. Anthony Fauci for his work.

Anthony Fauci’s career has experienced several health crises

“Thanks to him, the United States is now a stronger, more resilient and healthier country,” the White House said in a statement. Anthony Fauci worked with seven American presidents, starting with Ronald Reagan.

“It was an honor for me to lead NIAID,” said the American doctor, listing the health crises that humanity has gone through during his mandates: the AIDS epidemic, Ebola, Zika.

In 2020, Anthony Fauci, already well-known in the field of infectious diseases and the fight against AIDS, but still little known to the general public, came into the spotlight shortly after he joined the presidential task force created by the White House to fight the novel coronavirus. former US President Donald Trump.

But the latter years of his career have not been without controversy: official documents obtained by American journalists last October show that the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the main biomedical research agency of the US government, funded dangerous research, conducted at the Wuhan Institute. Virology.

Fauci flatly denied this when asked before Congress about these suspicions about NIH research with Chinese researchers.