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Anthony Fauci, US health secretary Alex Azar receive Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine
Anthony Fauci, who turns 80 on Thursday, noted that he’s getting the vaccine partly because he still sees patients as an attending physician at the NIH Clinical Center, but also to send a message “to the rest of the country that I feel extreme confidence in the safety and the efficacy of this vaccine.”
Anthony Fauci, the US government’s top infectious-disease doctor, received Moderna Inc.’s vaccine, part of an effort by health officials to build confidence in the shots.
Fauci was vaccinated With Moderna’s Shot at 10:55 a.m. New York time.
Anthony Fauci was among the first employees of the National Institutes of Health to get a Covid-19 vaccine, administered in the same auditorium where he first arrived at the NIH as a fellow 52 years ago.
Fauci, the US government’s top infectious-disease doctor, received Moderna Inc.’s vaccine along with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and NIH Director Francis Collins, and six front-line health care workers at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
The groundwork for Moderna’s messenger RNA vaccine began with a collaboration between NIH and the company before the pandemic began, Collins said. “What we’re seeing now is the culmination of years of research,” Fauci said.
The public ritual of vaccinating senior health leaders is part of an effort to build confidence in vaccines that were developed in record time and amid political wrangling over the timing of the vaccines’ authorization.
Fauci, who turns 80 on Thursday, noted that he’s getting the vaccine partly because he still sees patients as an attending physician at the NIH Clinical Center, but also to send a message “to the rest of the country that I feel extreme confidence in the safety and the efficacy of this vaccine.”
He flashed a thumbs-up sign after getting the shot in his left arm.
