U.S. President Donald Trump, who announced that he had tested positive for the coronavirus during early Friday morning, is doing “very well” as per his physician Sean Conley.
The President’s treatment includes a five day course of remdesivir and a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies, an experimental therapy. The doctor’s comments have also raised questions on the timeline of Mr. Trump’s diagnosis.
A number of others who had been in contact with the President at the confirmation hearing of Judge Amy Coney Barrett on September 26, have also tested positive for the virus.
“At this time, the team and I are extremely happy with the progress the President has made,” Dr Conley said, as he stood with other members of the President’s treatment team outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre – a military hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.
Dr. Conley said on Saturday afternoon that it was “72 hours into the diagnosis”, which implied a Wednesday afternoon diagnosis. The President travelled to a fundraiser at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Thursday. The White House informed the press of the diagnosis on Friday morning at 1 a.m.
When questioned on the timing of the diagnosis, Dr. Conley said, “Thursday afternoon, following the news of a close contact is when we repeated testing. And given kind of clinical indications and a little bit more concern and that’s when that…and late last night, we got the PCR confirmation that he was.”
A White House official said , after the medical briefing that the doctor had misspoken about when the diagnosis was made, as per a report in the Washington Post.
Dr. Conley declined to say when Mr Trump last tested negative. He also did not answer a question on whether Mr Trump had ever been on oxygen (which is often needed when blood oxygen saturation levels drop to unsafe levels). Instead, he reluctantly revealed the President was not given any on Thursday, Friday (while at Walter Reed) or Saturday morning prior to the briefing.
This does not rule out the possibility that he received oxygen at the White House, before being transferred to Walter Reed out of “an abundance of caution.”
Dr Conley said the President was walking around and in “exceptionally good spirits” on Saturday and had not had a fever for the last 24 hours. Mr. Trump had earlier had a fever, cough, congestion and fatigue as per reports. A prolific tweeter, the President was uncharacteristically quiet on the website on Friday and Saturday morning.
“Going welI, I think! Thank you to all. LOVE!!!” he tweeted close to midnight on Friday. On Saturday, he thanked the doctors and nurses in a tweet, saying that with their help he was “feeling well.” Mr. Trump also wrote that “tremendous progress” had been made in fighting “this plague” over the last six months.
First Lady Melania Trump, who also announced on Friday that she had tested positive, showed “no indication for hospitalization” as per Dr Conley and was convalescing at the White House.
Current and former Trump advisers Hope Hicks and Kellyanne Conway, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, Mr Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien were among those in the President’s circle who have tested positive.
Meanwhile, the virus continues to take its toll on Americans, with around 209,000 deaths and 7.36 million infections.