Biden tests positive for COVID
July 21, 2022
US President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with the coronavirus, the White House said on Thursday.
Biden, who is 79, "will continue to work in isolation until he tests negative," according to his aides, who said he "will participate in his planned meetings at the White House this morning via phone and Zoom from the residence.''
The White House also said Biden started taking a course of Paxlovid. The Pfizer-produced drug is typically administered within five days of symptoms appearing. It has proven to reduce hospitalizations and deaths among vulnerable patients by 90%.
Biden received the two-dose BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine against COVID shortly before taking office in 2021. He also received two booster shots earlier this year.
An official said Jill Biden, the US first lady, has tested negative.
A 'different place' than when Trump tested positive
Dozens of leaders and top-ranking officials have contracted COVID over the past two years, including France's Emmanuel Macron, Britain's Boris Johnson and Biden's predecessor, Donald Trump, to name a few.
"We are in a very different place than the last time a POTUS got COVID," Ezekiel "Zeke" Emanuel, a physician and former member of Biden's COVID transition team, wrote on Twitter.
Vaccines were not available when Trump was diagnosed with COVID in October 2020. At the time, he was given an experimental antibody treatment and steroids after his blood oxygen levels fell dangerously low and he was hospitalized.
fb/dj (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)