Dr. Fauci will meet with Biden's transition team for the first time on Thursday and will stay on at the National Institutes of Health under the next administration

• Dr. Anthony Fauci will meet with President-elect Joe Biden's transition team on Thursday and will stay on under Biden at the National Institutes of Health.
• Fauci said on Thursday morning that he has spoken several times with Biden's soon-to-be White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, and plans to meet virtually with Biden's "landing team" at 2 pm on Thursday.
• "Today will be the first day where there will be substantive discussions about the transition between me and the Biden team," Fauci told CBS News's Major Garrett on a podcast.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious-disease expert, will meet with President-elect Joe Biden's transition team on Thursday and will stay on under the new administration at the National Institutes of Health, where he has helped direct the federal government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fauci said on Thursday morning that he has spoken several times with Biden's soon-to-be White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, and plans to meet virtually with Biden's "landing team" at 2 pm on Thursday.

"Today will be the first day where there will be substantive discussions about the transition between me and the Biden team," Fauci told CBS News's Major Garrett on a podcast. "I'm very pleased that today we're having the first discussion about a number of things, vaccinations and things like that."

The Trump administration significantly delayed the start of Biden's official transition process, which the General Services Administration finally approved on Nov. 23. Fauci said he wished he had been able to begin the transition process earlier.

"I would have liked to have seen us getting involved with the team as early as we possibly can because we want the smooth transition to occur," he said.

Earlier on Thursday, Fauci said that the UK government had moved too quickly to approve a COVID-19 vaccine made by the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer and the German biotech firm BioNTech, and he insisted that the US's approach to vaccine approval is the "gold standard." The UK on Wednesday became the first Western country to approve a Covid-19 vaccine.

Fauci warned that approving a vaccine too quickly could discourage many Americans from getting vaccinated.

"The way the FDA is, our FDA is doing it, is the correct way," Fauci told Fox News in a Thursday interview. "We really scrutinize the data very carefully to guarantee to the American public that this is a safe and efficacious vaccine."