US President Joe Biden tested positive again for COVID-19 late Saturday morning after negative tests for several days, but no symptoms have reemerged and the president “continues to feel quite well,” said White House physician Kevin O’Connor.
In a memo released Saturday, O’Connor said there’s no need for additional treatment at this time but that close observation of the president’s condition would continue.
O’Connor said Biden had been testing more frequently for the coronavirus because of the possibility of a COVID recurrence following his treatment with Paxlovid, an oral medication used to prevent severe cases.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in an advisory earlier this year that a small number of participants in a clinical trial of Paxlovid had positive test results after testing negative. The agency said that in those cases, the recurrence of illness improved or resolved without additional treatment in an average of three days.
O’Connor said Biden would “reinitiate strict isolation procedures” to avoid the possibility of infecting others.
Biden, who’s fully vaccinated and double boosted, started taking Paxlovid after testing positive for COVID on July 21. He experienced only mild coronavirus symptoms, including a runny nose, fatigue and an occasional cough.
On Monday, O’Connor said Biden’s symptoms had “almost completely resolved,” and on Wednesday, the physician said Biden had completed his five-day course of Paxlovid and that he’d tested negative for the first time on Tuesday evening.
Biden tweeted out a brief note about the new positive test on Saturday morning and later tweeted a quick update video, saying, “I’m feeling fine, everything’s good” and adding that he’d be “working from home” for the next couple of days.
The news about Biden comes amid concern about Omicron BA.5, the new, extremely contagious variant of COVID.
Read more: What We Know About Omicron BA.5
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