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The nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said the U.S. is “certainly” still in the middle of a Covid-19 pandemic and he is “very troubled” by the divisive state of American politics. “As a public health official, I don’t want to see anyone suffer and die from Covid,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. (Capoot, 11/27)

With the Biden administration urging people to get both a COVID-19 booster and a flu shot as soon as possible, the White House's Dr. Ashish Jha said Sunday that updated vaccinations will help people "move on" from the pandemic. "It's been, obviously, a long two and a half years for Americans, and we understand that people want to move on," Jha, the White House COVID-19 coordinator, told ABC "This Week" co-anchor Martha Raddatz of the virus that has killed more than 1 million people in the U.S. "The good news is people can move on if they keep their immunity up to date." (MacPherson, 11/27

Top Biden administration health experts were cautiously optimistic Sunday about their new campaign for Covid-19 boosters, even as they admitted vaccination and booster rates continued to be lower than they should be. “I think we’re going to see a lot more people getting vaccinated in the upcoming weeks. This is why we’re launching the campaign we are right now,” Ashish Jha, coordinator of the White House’s Covid-19 response, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” Many people typically get flu shots in November, December and January, Jha said. (Olander, 11/27)

Anthony Fauci, the retiring top official in the United States response to the Covid-19 pandemic, said Sunday he has “a completely open mind” about the origins of the respiratory virus. “I have a completely open mind about that, despite people saying that I don’t,” Fauci said, when asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about the theory that the virus may have leaked from a lab in China in 2019. (Olander, 11/27)

“They’re very suspicious of anybody trying to accuse them,” Fauci said of the Chinese government. “We need to have an open dialogue with their scientists and our scientists, keep the politics out of it.” (Schonfeld, 11/27)

Anthony Fauci on Sunday pushed back against former Vice President Mike Pence’s claims that the White House adviser aligned himself with Democratic governors during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying he is a “public health person” who made decisions based on science. (Dress, 11/27)