Donald Trump leaves hospital after 3 days of Covid-19 treatment; infections among White House aides mount
- President took off his mask and flashed a double thumbs-up. He then walked into the White House without putting his mask back on
- Joe Biden castigated Trump for saying Americans should not be afraid of Covid-19
US President Donald Trump left hospital to return to the White House on Monday evening after spending the weekend undergoing aggressive treatment for Covid-19, even as the number of known cases at the White House continued to climb.
Wearing a surgical mask, suit and tie, Trump walked out of the Walter Reed National Medical Center around 6.30pm, pumping his fist and giving a thumbs-up to onlookers. He ignored shouted questions from the press about whether he considered himself a “superspreader”.
Minutes prior, he tweeted that he planned to return to the campaign trail “soon”. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that infected individuals should remain in isolation for ten full days after first exhibiting symptoms.
Trump’s departure from the military hospital in Bethesda, Maryland came hours after his own press secretary Kayleigh McEnany announced that she had tested positive for the coronavirus and as news of other infections among White House aides emerged.
“I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good!,” Trump had tweeted earlier in the afternoon ahead of a press briefing from his medical team. “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.”
In a video posted after that on Twitter, Trump urged Americans to “get out there, be careful, we have the best medicines in the world ... the vaccines are coming momentarily”. The 74-year-old president also boasted about feeling “better than I did 20 years ago”.
“Now I’m better, maybe I’m immune, I don’t know,” he added.
Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows told Fox News that the president was “ready to get back to a normal working schedule” even though he was still considered contagious.
Landing at the White House on Marine One, Trump climbed the South Portico steps, removed his mask and declared: “I feel good”. He then entered the White House without a protective mask.
Democratic White House hopeful Joe Biden castigated Trump for saying Americans should not be afraid of Covid-19.
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US President Donald Trump leaves Walter Reed military hospital after being admitted for Covid-19
“Tell that to the 205,000 families who lost somebody,” said Biden, who faced Trump on stage in their rollercoaster debate last Wednesday, just two days before the president announced his positive diagnosis.
Briefing reporters at Walter Reed earlier in the day, Dr Brian Garibaldi, director of the biocontainment unit at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, who has been part of the president’s treatment, said Trump would be discharged after getting the fourth of five doses of remdesivir, an antiviral medicine.
Trump “may not entirely be out of the woods yet”, said White House doctor Sean Conley. “The team and I agree that all our evaluations, and most importantly, his clinical status, support the president‘s safe return home, where he’ll be surrounded by world class medical care, 24-7.”
“We‘re in a bit of uncharted territory when it comes to a patient that received the therapies he has so early in the course [of the illness], so ... if we can get through to Monday with him remaining the same or improving ... then we will all take that final deep sigh of relief,” Conley said.
Asked about Trump’s advice that people should not be afraid of Covid-19, Conley declined to comment.
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US President Donald Trump takes mask off as he arrives at White House
However, other medical experts weighed in.
“The reality is that for a man his age, who is obese, the risk of dying of Covid-19 is around 10 per cent maybe, maybe now it’s five. It‘s a massive number,” Dr Rob Davidson, executive director of the Committee to Protect Medicare and a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s pandemic response, said in a video shared on Twitter.
“He’ll leave the hospital and he may be just fine ... and he will take that as a message to America that this is no big deal,” he said. “The reality is this thing will cut you down. It doesn‘t care who you are and doesn’t care about your political party,” Davidson added. “So please people just wear masks, just stay away from one another and listen to your doctor.”
Super spreader events: is the White House now a Covid-19 hotspot?
Trump was also prescribed a course of the steroid dexamethasone, used for Covid-19 patients whose lungs may have suffered damage, because of “several little temporary drops” in Trump’s blood oxygen levels, Conley added, declining to say whether any inflammation was found in the president’s lungs.
Mounting Covid-19 cases among White House officials and those who have attended events there, in particular the September 26 introduction ceremony for Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett – where some 180 invitees sat close together for an extended period, many without masks – have underscored criticism over how the administration is managing the pandemic.
Including Trump, more than a dozen attendees of that event have tested positive for Covid-19, including Mike Lee and Thom Tillis, both Republican senators from Utah and North Carolina, respectively.
“Nothing about the spread at the White House is a surprise to anyone working in public health,” said Brian Labus, an expert in epidemiology and biostatistics at University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ School of Public Health.
“We have consistently recommended avoiding large group gatherings, maintaining social distance when around other people, and wearing face coverings. We have made these recommendations specifically to try to limit the spread of Covid-19 and prevent superspreader events from happening.”
While medical experts have said the treatment plan was aggressive, suggesting that his condition might have been more serious than White House officials had let on, Trump left Walter Reed on Sunday for a quick drive-by to see his supporters gathered outside.
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Conflicting reports about Donald Trump’s Covid-19 infection as he greets supporters near hospital
Trump and his close team of advisers with him at Walter Reed came under criticism for planning the drive-by. CNN quoted one unidentified Secret Service agent as saying the driver of the airtight SUV and another agent in the front passenger seat would need to quarantine, and another calling the move “simply reckless”.
Trump briefly leaves hospital to joy ride past his supporters outside
“Appropriate precautions were taken in the execution of this movement to protect the president and all those supporting it,” deputy White House press secretary Judd Deere said in response to the criticism. The movement “was cleared by the medical team as safe to do”.
Asked about the drive by, Conley said the agents in the car with Trump were fitted with the same kind of personal protective equipment that those treating the president at Walter Reed wore.
Other questions have swirled around how widely Covid-19 has spread among Trump’s aides, fuelled further after McEnany announced her diagnosis.
“After testing negative consistently, including every day since Thursday, I tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday morning while experiencing no symptoms,” McEnany announced in a Twitter post. “No reporters, producers, or members of the press are listed as close contacts by the White House Medical Unit.”
White House press aides Chad Gilmartin and Karoline Leavitt have also tested positive, Bloomberg News reported, citing sources familiar with the situation.
Meanwhile, the timing of Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis continued to be scrutinised.
The president did not disclose a positive rapid test result he received on Thursday, before an appearance on Fox News, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Trump’s oxygen levels dropped and he has been treated with steroids
Trump did not reveal those results during the interview, and instead confirmed earlier reports that Hope Hicks, one of his top aides, had tested positive for the disease, and said about his own status only that he was awaiting results.
“I definitively had no knowledge of Hope Hicks’ diagnosis before holding a White House press briefing on Thursday,” McEnany said, addressing criticism that she failed to disclose the development to reporters that day.
Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, and University of Notre Dame president John Jenkins, who all attended the September 26 Barrett introduction, have also tested positive for Covid-19 since the event.
Additional reporting by Owen Churchill and Associated Press
