A familiar voice during Alabama Public Radio’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic will succeed Dr. Anthony Fauci as the nation's top infectious disease expert. Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo is a researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who will become director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the fall. She will oversee the agency's $6.3 billion budget, its research and its response to infectious disease outbreaks.
Fauci, 82, retired from a five-decade career in December. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he became a household name as he gave updates at daily White House press conferences and in frequent media interviews.
Since Fauci's retirement, Dr. Hugh Auchincloss Jr. has been serving as acting director.
Marrazzo's research has focused on sexually transmitted diseases and the prevention of HIV infection. At the university, she is director of the medical school's division of infectious diseases.
Her appointment was made by Lawrence Tabak, acting director for the National Institutes of Health.
Marazzo was heard almost constantly during APR’s newscast coverage of the coronavirus. During a news feature on COVID concerns while students returned to the University of Alabama in June of 2020, Marazzo offered advice to these young people and their parents…
“People are mixing more. People are letting their guard down. People aren’t wearing masks,” said Dr. Jeanne Marazzo, director of infectious disease at the University of Alabama in Birmingham.
She took to the microphone during a press conference to repeat her advice about the coronavirus. Specifically, she’s worried about long term face to face contact which allows for breathing, sneezing, coughing and other ways COVID-19 appears to be spread.
“If you are within 6 feet of someone for more than fifteen minutes, that’s when that alarm bell should be going off,” Marrazzo said. “That’s not to say if you’re right next to somebody and they cough in your face and run away that you can’t get infected, of course you can.”
You can click below to hear this story again from the APR archives.
