Anthony Fauci was hospitalized this month after contracting West Nile virus.
Fauci, 83, the country’s former COVID-19 czar, as hospitalized for six days and is now home where he is recuperating from the mosquito-borne disease, The Washington Post reported.
“A full recovery is expected,” his spokesperson said, according to the Washington Post.
The virus typically spreads when Culex pipiens, the common Northern house mosquito, bite infected birds and then bite people and other creatures, according to the CDC. West Nile virus is the leading cause of mosquito-borne disease in the country, the agency said.
The virus sent 1,800 to the hospital last year in the U.S., and was responsible for 182 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control. There were 216 confirmed cases in 2024, the agency said.
Symptoms may include headache, fever, aches, vomiting and other symptoms, but an estimated 80% of those who have the virus experience no symptoms at all. There are no known vaccines or treatments.
Fauci retired as chief of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 2022 after running it for nearly four decades. At the time of his departure he was the highest paid federal employee, with a $480,654 annual salary.
Fauci has remained a partisan flashpoint as a result of the pandemic.
Fauci advocated for school closures during the pandemic, which he now later admitted was a mistake.
He adamantly denied that the U.S., through his department within the National Institute of Health, funded gain-of-function research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, but this year, NIH principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak admitted to Congress that US taxpayers did in fact do so.
The doctor has also come in for sharp attacks from animal rights activists for his National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases funding a lab in Tunisia that allegedly tortures and kills dozens of beagle puppies.
