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Dr. Anthony Fauci shared a sobering message with “Conversations on Health Care”: In the past year about 20% of Americans have received the COVID booster vaccine; “that’s not good if you really want to get a degree of immunity that you can lift up,” he says. Fauci explains that getting to 50% should be the goal.

“What we’re hoping is that people who come in with the uptake of a flu vaccine would also come in…at the same time, the same day…[get the] COVID [one]. The new vaccine is not going to be a bivalent, it’s going to be a monovalent Omicron derivative.” The fall 2023 COVID vaccine is currently awaiting FDA approval.

Fauci also reflected on the tense relationship between China and the United States. “The more we make accusations and the more we push against them, the more they pull back and in order to be able to have the kind of broad, global surveillance, global cooperation, global collaboration, you’ve got to have a relationship the way we had before COVID.” He also acknowledged that the Chinese have been very obtuse and secretive.

Fauci, speaking at Aspen Ideas: Health, harkened back to the bipartisan creation two decades ago of the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which is credited with saving 25 million lives in under-resourced countries.

Fauci also shared that he’s making progress on his memoir, with a manuscript due by the end of the year and an expected publish date by the first half of 2024.

He was interviewed by “Conversations on Health Care” hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter; they’re grateful to Aspen Ideas: Health leaders for inviting the program to hold one-on-one interviews during the gathering.

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