Biden tests positive for COVID, has ‘very mild symptoms’: ‘I’m doing great’

President Biden tested positive for COVID on Thursday and is isolating with “very mild symptoms” in the family quarters of the White House.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the 79-year-old president had begun taking Paxlovid, an antiviral drug designed to reduce the severity of the disease.

“Folks, I’m doing great,” Biden tweeted. “I really appreciate your inquiries and concerns. But I’m doing well, getting a lot of work done.”

Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, said in a letter that Biden had a runny nose and “fatigue, with an occasional dry cough, which started yesterday evening.”

The president had planned to visit Pennsylvania to talk about his crime prevention plans and attend a Democratic fundraiser, and then spend a long weekend in Delaware. Those events are canceled.

First lady Jill Biden spoke to reporters as she arrived at a school in Detroit on Thursday, telling them she had just gotten off the phone with her husband.

“He’s doing fine,” she said. “He’s feeling good.”

President Joe Biden speaks about climate change and clean energy at Brayton Power Station, Wednesday, July 20, 2022, in Somerset, Mass. (Evan Vucci/)

Biden is fully vaccinated and twice boosted, getting his second booster at the end of March.

The president will isolate for five days and can return to his usual activities after a negative test, White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha told reporters at a briefing.

Jha said Biden’s illness should serve as a “marker” showing how far the nation has come toward keeping Americans safe from serious illness and death during the pandemic.

“It’s a reminder of why we are working so hard to make sure that every American has the same protection as the president,” Jha said.

Asked where Biden might have contracted the virus, Jean-Pierre said, “I don’t think that matters.” She later clarified that to say the White House was focused on how Biden was feeling and would engage in contact tracing.

The president spent much of last week in Israel and Saudi Arabia. White House officials had told reporters that Biden planned to minimize contact during the trip, yet as soon as he exited Air Force One on July 13 he was fist-bumping, handshaking and even was seen in an occasional hug. The CDC says symptoms can appear two to 14 days after exposure to the virus.

Biden’s positive test comes as the highly transmissible omicron variant is the dominant strain in the U.S., but scientists say it poses a lower risk for severe illness to those who are up to date on their vaccinations. The BA.5 sub-strain, believed to be even more contagious, now makes up more than 65% of U.S. cases.

After more than two years and over a million deaths in the U.S., the virus is still killing an average of 353 people a day here, according to the CDC. The unvaccinated are at far greater risk, more than twice as likely to test positive and nine times as likely to die from the virus as those who have received at least a primary dose of the vaccines, according to the public health agency.

With News Wire Services