Fauci highlighted an article in The Lancet published on Wednesday which said people aged 65 and over were at particular risk of getting re-infected.

‘I’m afraid if people hear what he says, and they believe it, and you have an elderly person who has been infected, and they decide, well Rand Paul says you won’t get it again – they could get re-infected again and get into trouble,’ he said.

‘That’s the thing that bothers me about that kind of an interchange.’

Fauci said he understood that people were ‘tired of the constraints’ of social distancing and mask wearing, but insisted that for now it was still the right thing to do.

‘We are not saying doing this indefinitely,’ he said.

‘We are not saying this is the way it’s going to have to be all the time.

‘We are saying that if you look at the data, look at the science, you could get in trouble if you pull back too prematurely.