National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Fauci Announces December Departure From Government Service

By Associated Press

and Newsy Staff
August 22, 2022

Dr. Anthony Fauci — the nation’s top infectious disease expert — has said his departure from the federal government does not mean he’s retiring.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert who became a household name — and the subject of partisan attacks — during the COVID-19 pandemic, announced Monday he will depart the federal government in December after more than five decades of service.

Fauci, who serves as President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, has been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He was a leader in the federal response to HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases even before the coronavirus hit.

“I will be leaving these positions in December of this year to pursue the next chapter of my career,” Fauci said in a statement, calling those roles “the honor of a lifetime.”

President Biden praised Fauci in a statement, saying, “Whether you’ve met him personally or not, he has touched all Americans’ lives with his work. I extend my deepest thanks for his public service. The United States of America is stronger, more resilient, and healthier because of him.”

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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The Delayed U.S. Response To Monkeypox

By Newsy Staff
July 21, 2022

Monkeypox is spreading in the U.S., with a lack of tests and a disorganized testing system adding to criticism of the country’s response.

A new disease outbreak has been detected on another continent. It has spread to the U.S., where growth has been exponential, especially in New York City. While it’s been two months since the disease was first spotted, the U.S. is struggling to muster the tools it needs to contain the outbreak.

It sounds like where the country was with COVID in March of 2020, but now we’re seeing something similar with monkeypox.

The latest outbreak of the disease has spread to most U.S. states and dozens of countries worldwide.

The U.S. has at least 2,000 confirmed monkeypox cases nationwide, with the official case rate rising more than tenfold in the past month. With a testing shortage, it’s likely that the actual case count is higher.

Though they sound the same, the diseases are a bit different.

COVID currently spreads more easily than monkeypox, as it primarily infects people through airborne transmission. Monkeypox spreads through close physical contact and exchanging of fluids, transmitting and often presenting in ways that can resemble sexually-transmitted illnesses.

And, monkeypox only can spread once a person has symptoms, unlike COVID’s asymptomatic, or pre-symptomatic transmission. Also, unlike with COVID, there is an approved vaccine ready that prevents monkeypox transmission; an existing smallpox vaccine was found to work against monkeypox as well.

There’s also help on the way. The CDC announced last week that it has the capacity for 70,000 monkeypox tests per week and that at least 300,000 shots have been made available to states, with nearly 800,000 more expected to be ready for distribution by the end of this month, according to Health and Human Services.

But the jump from having the tools needed to stop an outbreak to actually using them has proven difficult. Vaccine rollout has been a bit of a mixed bag.

Federal health officials have been working on getting vaccines out to cities and states. But with demand outstripping supply in epicenters like New York City, it’s not a guarantee that everyone who wants, or needs, a monkeypox vaccine can get one.

“We’ll certainly need much more vaccine and quickly to meet the burden of disease here in New York City, the epicenter of the monkeypox epidemic in the United States,” Ashwin Vasan, commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said. “We share our New Yorkers frustrations with about waiting to make appointments or long lines. Please hear us when we say every action we’ve taken to date has been with one goal in mind: to get vaccine to the city and to get shots in arms as quickly as possible.”

It’s a misstep that has come as the U.S. has had more than two years of experience combatting an existing outbreak and after a year and a half of experience distributing vaccines to slow an outbreak.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Biden’s top medical adviser, has acknowledged the response hasn’t been perfect.

“It would have been good to have had a lot more vaccines available early on, but right now we have accelerated that extensively,” Dr. Fauci said. “Could we have done better? Always. You never say we did perfectly.”

In New York, health officials say they will now focus on delivering the vaccine to people who have not received the first dose. But, this puts into question if those who already got the first shot will be at risk of not getting the second dose at all. The second dose of the vaccine is meant to be administered 28 days after the first to be fully effective.

Authorities in New York City are doing this despite advice from the FDA and CDC.

: newsy.com

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Dr. Fauci: Leaving Government Position Does Not Mean Retirement

Dr. Anthony Fauci said he doesn’t plan to retire after stepping down from his current role as the government’s top infectious disease expert.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said Tuesday he doesn’t plan to retire after stepping down from his role by the end of President Joe Biden’s current term.

In an interview with NPR, Fauci said he still plans to pursue other directions in his professional career after leaving his current role by January 2025.

Fauci, 81, was appointed director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 1984, and has led research in HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, Ebola, Zika and the coronavirus. He has advised seven presidents and is President Biden’s chief medical adviser.

While he hasn’t given an exact date of when he plans to step down, he said when that time comes he will make a “formal announcement.”

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Fauci Expects To Retire By End Of President Biden’s Current Term

By Associated Press

and Newsy Staff
July 18, 2022

81-year-old Dr. Fauci said he plans to retire as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases by January 2025.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said Monday he plans to retire by the end of President Joe Biden’s term in January 2025.

In an interview with Politico, Fauci said he hoped to “leave behind an institution where I have picked the best people in the country, if not the world, who will continue my vision.”

Asked Monday on CNN when he planned to retire, Fauci said he does not have a specific retirement date in mind and hasn’t started the process. He said he expects to leave government before the end of Biden’s current term, which ends in January 2025.

“By the time we get to the end of Biden’s first term, I will very likely (retire),” Fauci said. He added: “it is extremely unlikely — in fact, for sure — that I am not going to be here beyond January 2025.”

Fauci, long a prominent figure of the government’s response to infectious disease, was thrust even more into the spotlight at the height of the coronavirus pandemic under then-President Donald Trump. As the pandemic response became politicized, with Trump suggesting the pandemic would “fade away,” promoting unproven treatment methods and vilifying scientists who countered him, Fauci had to get security protection when he and his family received death threats and harassment.

Fauci testified repeatedly to Congress about the virus, and he and some Republicans, including Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, engaged in heated exchanges over the origins of the virus.

Fauci said Monday his decision to eventually leave his role was unrelated to politics.

“It has nothing to do with pressures, nothing to do with all of the other nonsense that you hear about, all the barbs, the slings and the arrows. That has no influence on me,” he said.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Getting One Vaccine Is Good. How About Mix-and-Match?

In January, Britain made a change to its vaccine guidelines that shocked many health experts: If the second dose of one vaccine wasn’t available, patients could be given a different one.

The new rule was based on sheer guesswork; there was no scientific data at the time demonstrating that mixing two coronavirus vaccines was safe and effective. But that may change soon.

In February, researchers at the University of Oxford began a trial in which volunteers received a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine followed by a dose of AstraZeneca’s formulation, or vice versa. This month, the researchers will start analyzing the blood of the subjects to see how well the mix-and-match approach works.

As growing numbers of vaccines are being authorized, researchers are testing other combinations. A few are in clinical trials, while others are being tested in animals for now.

created an Ebola vaccine whose first dose contained a virus called an adenovirus. The second shot used another virus, called vesicular stomatitis virus.

When the Covid-19 pandemic began last year, the Gamaleya researchers used a similar strategy to create vaccines against the new coronavirus. The first dose used the same adenovirus as in their Ebola vaccine, called Ad5. The second dose contained a different human adenovirus, Ad26. The researches inserted a gene into both viruses for the protein on the surface of the coronavirus, called spike.

Studies revealed that the vaccine, now known as Sputnik V, provided a strong defense against Covid-19. In clinical trials, the researchers found that it had an efficacy of 91.6 percent. Sputnik V is now in use in Russia and 56 other countries.

Recently, the Gamaleya institute joined forces with AstraZeneca, which makes its own Covid-19 vaccine. AstraZeneca’s consists of two doses of a chimpanzee adenovirus called ChAdOx1. Last week, the company reported that its vaccine had an efficacy of 76 percent.

found that the mixture worked better than two doses of the spike or of the R.B.D.

The researchers suspect that the first dose produces a broad range of antibodies that can stick to spots along the length of the spike protein, and that the second dose delivers a big supply of particularly potent antibodies to the tip of the spike. Together, the assortment of antibodies does a better job of stopping the coronavirus.

held back exports of vaccines to other countries as it grappled with a surge of Covid-19. For countries that were counting on those vaccines, a safe alternative for second doses could save lives.

After Britain was criticized in January for suggesting that vaccines could be mixed, researchers at the University of Oxford set out to put the idea to a formal test. In a trial called Com-Cov, they recruited 830 volunteers to test the two vaccines authorized by the British government: AstraZeneca’s adenovirus-based vaccine and the vaccine by Pfizer-BioNTech.

Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine uses a fundamentally different technology to produce spike proteins in the body. It contains tiny bubbles with genetic molecules called RNA. Once the bubbles fuse to cells, the cells use the RNA to make spike proteins.