Sheba Medical Center, Israel’s largest hospital, on Monday honored American immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci with the "Sheba Champion of Global Health Award”, i24NEWS reports.

The award recognized Fauci's work as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and his contribution to the COVID-19 response.

Fauci played an important role during the pandemic as Chief Medical Advisor to then-President Donald Trump and then to President Joe Biden. He stepped down from his role at the end of 2022.

The award, presented to Dr. Fauci at a private ceremony in Washington, D.C., celebrated cooperation between Sheba Medical Center and the US government during the COVID-19 pandemic, including sharing data on infections, vaccinations, and boosters.

"I am proud to present to Dr. Fauci with this award which recognizes his commitment to global health and his significant contributions during the COVID-19 pandemic," said Professor Yitshak Kreiss, Chief Executive Officer of Sheba Medical Center, during the ceremony.

“It is no exaggeration to say that Dr. Fauci and his team, through the sharing of information and research, have helped save countless Israeli lives and enabled us to implement our vaccination program,” he added.

Fauci praised Israel in his remarks, saying, “We learned from the Israelis, predominantly from our colleagues at Sheba, things that were not available to us at the time. And we were able to make policy decisions about how we would handle vaccinations, boosters, and things like that based on the real-time data that we were getting from Israel.”

Fauci has several times praised Israel’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. In February of 2021, he cited the success of the vaccination campaign in Israel as proof of the effectiveness of the vaccine.

Later, he said in a radio interview that US officials are receiving information from Israel on the booster shot campaign, and there is particular interest in data on young people.

“I think ultimately there will be enough data to show that Israel is doing the right thing,” said Fauci, who added he takes the statistics coming out of Israel “very seriously”.