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By Rick Pearson 
 CHICAGO — Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Tuesday that Americans should not be concerned that infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci will leave the Trump administration, saying he remains a “trusted adviser” of himself and the administration.
 Azar also said he believes there is a “credible” chance for tens of thousands of doses of coronavirus vaccine to be distributed as part of phased trials this fall, with hundreds of thousands of doses available by the start of the year.
 Azar, a former pharmaceutical executive who had previous stints in the federal health care agency, said pandemic spikes in the South and West, and increased cases in 37 states were not a result of efforts to reopen economies too early but of a failure in personal behavior, particularly among younger people, to adhere to public health guidelines.
 Azar was in Chicago to visit with health care professionals at Rush University Medical Center as well as Haymarket Center as part of an effort to encourage people to resume medical procedures, such as mammograms and colonoscopies. Azar said such procedures fell 90% during the recent peak of the pandemic in the Chicago area.
 The Trump administration’s efforts in dealing with the pandemic have become a major issue in a presidential election season.
 Trump this week retweeted former game show host Chuck Woolery’s baseless claim that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was “lying” about the coronavirus. Additionally, over the weekend, the White House sought to cast doubt about the credibility of Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
 Fauci, who has served under six presidents, has found his public visibility sidetracked by the White House over his comments warning of the need to control COVID-19 that conflict with Trump’s efforts to seek a reopened economy. Polls have found Fauci to have a greater trust factor than Trump over issues involving the pandemic.
 “I’ve known Dr. Fauci and worked with him for close to 20 years now as a friend and colleague. He is a very trusted adviser of the president and myself and the vice president. He contributes his ideas. He’ll continue to contribute his ideas and views,” Azar said.
 “The president builds teams where each of us provide our inputs from our perspective, and his job as president is to take those inputs and the different perspectives, de-conflict them and come about with what he believes in the direction he’s going to provide for the country,” he said.
 “But Dr. Fauci, as the president has made clear, is one of his trusted advisers and will remain so. Nobody should be concerned. Dr. Fauci is and will remain a trusted adviser of the president and myself.”
 Appearing at a forum at Georgetown University in Washington on Tuesday, Fauci was asked about White House attempts to discredit him. “You can trust respected medical authorities. I believe I’m one of them, so I think you can trust me,” he said, citing a “track record of telling the truth” and using “scientific and good data.”
 In an interview with the Tribune, Azar said the spike in coronavirus cases in the South was not a question of “open-reopen” but an issue of personal responsibility and failure to follow public health guidelines of wearing a facial covering, physical distancing and personal hygiene — particularly among younger people as indoor serving in bars and restaurants opened up.
 That has prompted several governors, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, to backtrack on opening bars, and indoor dining and restrictions on gatherings of more than 10 people.
 Azar said the capacity of the health system in the South is not about facilities, such as availability of intensive care beds, but about the personnel to operate them. Efforts, he said, are being made to increase health care staff in those areas.
 But he said reverting to a widespread economic shutdown can be avoided.
 “We’ve actually done modeling that if those (public health) steps are executed well with discipline — if we as individuals will take those measures — we can actually turn around the rate of infection and get to negative infection growth in ways that are not quite as much but comparable to shutdown-type approaches,” he said.
 “Quite clearly, people went from being locked down to … behaviors that were not consistent with our recommendations,” he said.
 “We’ve got to act responsibly as individuals. If we don’t do that, then you do see that change is needed like in the South where we recommended closing bars, restricting indoor dining or in California, pulling back on elements of reopening. Because if we don’t act responsibly as individuals, that freedom gets taken away from us,” he said.
 Azar said he expects it is possible that a rollout of various vaccines in which the U.S. government has invested could begin in late fall with widespread distribution by the beginning of the new year. Even if a vaccine is developed in which the government has not invested, he said “money will not be a barrier to access to vaccines for any individual.”
 “It is a credible goal to have high tens of millions of doses before the end of the year and then hundreds of millions of doses at the beginning of the year. So that would be a transitional rollout. You’re not going to wait until you have stored up vaccine. You’ll want to use it where it can be of the most value and provide the most efficacy in the safest way for people,” he said.
 Azar acknowledged with the development of a successful vaccine, there will be a need to “tackle that movement” against vaccinations, saying development and testing will be “transparent with the data” and engaging in an education campaign with the public.
 The Cabinet secretary also said the health care industry is much better prepared now than it was during the initial stages of the pandemic regarding training, treatment and personal protective gear.
 “Where we are today thanks to President Trump’s leadership and the work of our governors and our whole-of-economy approach, we are in a dramatically better place today than we were two or three months ago,” he said.
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HHS Secretary Alex Azar praises Fauci, blames spike in COVID-19 cases on behavior, particularly among younger people