WATCH: Anthony Fauci reflects on career, pandemic in final briefing

After more than 50 years in government, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, briefed reporters from the White House on Tuesday, delivering what he called his “final message” from that podium, urging Americans to get their COVID-19 booster shots.

Watch the briefing in the player above.

“We know it’s safe. we know that it is effective. So my message and my final message, may be the final message I give you from this podium, is that please, for your own safety, for that of your family, get your updated COVID-19 shot as soon as you’re eligible to protect yourself, your family and your community,” Fauci said in a final pitch to the public.

Fauci announced earlier this year that he will leave the federal government in December. He is the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and also chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden.

Asked how he’d like Americans to remember his service in government, Fauci said he’ll let others “judge the value or not” of his accomplishments.

READ MORE: Seniors urged to get extra-strength flu vaccines this season

“I think what I’ve accomplished in my 54 years at the NIH and my 38 years as the director of NIAID, although COVID is really really very important, it is a fragment of the total 40 years that I’ve been doing it,” Fauci said.

“But what I would like people to remember about what I’ve done is that every day for all of those years I’ve given it everything that I have and I’ve never left anything on the field,” he said.

Fauci also addressed the misinformation that has been rampant for the duration of the pandemic.

“You remember if you were around that at this podium, I contradicted those which set off a whole series of things in my life,” he said. “The people who have correct information, who take science seriously, who don’t have strange way out theories about things…need to speak up more because the other side that just keeps putting out misinformation and disinformation seems to be tireless in that effort,” Fauci said, adding, “It’s going to be very difficult.”