Trump, doing well at Walter Reed after testing Covid positive, is 'ready to walk out of there'

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump was flown to the Walter Reed Military Hospital on Friday after he tested positive for Covid-19 and developed a low-grade fever, congestion, cough, and had difficulty breathing, is now doing well and joking that he is "ready to walk out of here today," his doctors said on Saturday.


"The team and I are extremely happy with the progress the president has made. He's been fever free for 24 hours and we are cautiously optimistic," Trump's personal physician Sean Conley said outside the hospital, adding that the President has a mild cough and nasal congestion that are resolving.


Trump was rushed to the hospital as a precautionary measure even as the coronavirus attacked the White House and his inner circle, infecting his campaign manager Bill Stepien, his aide

Kellyanne Conway

, three Republican Senators, and the White House press corps.

The US President was administered 8 grams of Regeneron’s anti Covid-19 polyclonal antibody cocktail before he was taken to the hospital, where he was put on the experimental drug Remdesivir after he had trouble breathing. He is expected to stay there for a few days, although Dr Shaun Dooley, a critical care physician, said he is in "high spirits" and told his team this morning "I feel like I could walk out of here today."

Dooley said the President is not on oxygen right now and he is walking around and working in his hospital suite. He has not transferred power to Vice-president Pence.

"Going welI, I think! Thank you to all. LOVE!!!" Trump tweeted on Friday night, in what was only his third tweet in 72 hours for someone who tweets incessantly.

In an earlier 18-second video clip recorded just before he walked unaided to the Marine One chopper that flew him to the hospital, Trump said, "I want to thank everybody for the tremendous support. I'm going to Walter Reed Hospital. I think I'm doing very well. We're going to make sure that things work out. The first lady is doing very well. So thank you very much, I appreciate it. I will never forget it. Thank you."

Melania Trump

, whose symptoms evidently are milder than the President’s, did not go with him. But the virus, which was always lurking around a White House with loose protocols, broke through and infected several people.

Three events are coming under scrutiny for spreading the virus amid growing ire at Trump and his presidency’s reckless disregard for basic mandates recommended by his own administration and health experts.

A White House Rose Garden event last Saturday to announce the nomination of Judge Amy Barrett Cohen to the Supreme Court saw a political and legal elites packed together without social distancing or masking, a hallmark of the Trump White House’s disdain for expert recommendation. At least seven people, including Trump’s former counsellor, Kellyanne Conway, and two Republican senators, Thom Tillis and Mike Lee, are suspected to have been infected at this event.

There is also growing outrage at the behavior of Trump and his family at the Presidential debate earlier this week at Cleveland, where eleven people involved in its planning and set up have reportedly tested positive. Debate moderator Chris Wallace has disclosed that Trump showed up too late to the debate to be tested as planned so they had to abide by the "honor system" that trusted him. Other accounts showed Trump family members waving away masks offered to them in the auditorium although they had been wearing them earlier.

There is also concern that Trump went ahead with attending a fundraiser in New Jersey on Thursday despite knowing that he had been in close proximity to Hope Hicks, a White House aide who flew with him to Cleveland where she first felt sick and was subsequently found to be Covid+ve. Allegations of reckless endangerment are being made against the President amid reports of donors who were in close contact with him panicking.

The developments over the past 36 hours has jolted the political landscape, casting a shadow on an election campaign that was already chaotic with dark, dire clouds over the denouement. The Trump camp is now in disarray and how it pulls itself together depends on how quickly he recovers from the infection, even as some liberal conspiracy theorists (notably film maker Michael Moore) believe the President is faking the illness as a political ploy.

There are doubts if Trump will recover in time for the second presidential debate on October 15, and even if he does, whether he will agree to take part in a re-arranged format that will force him to maintain decorum. There are also doubts if the confirmation hearings of the Trump's conservative nominee Amy Coney Barrett will go ahead considering the two of the Republican senators who have tested

Covid

+ve are on the Senate Judiciary Committee that has to pass the nomination first.

Meanwhile, everybody is now wearing masks in a chastened White House amid universal ridicule for the manner in which Trump and his surrogates dismissed the virus and denigrated others they saw as old, infirm, or unwell. There are needling comments about the President receiving top-line medical treatment including polyclonal antibodies and remdesivir at tax-payer expense after having dodged taxes and recommended hydroxychloroquin and bleach to others, even as videos of him mocking Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton for their purported infirmity is being replayed endlessly.

"Do a thought experiment: if Biden were sick, what would happen? Here's my guess: Trump would be openly gloating, Republicans would be loudly celebrating, their campaigns would put out ads trying to raise money on the back of his illness," one political commentator noted.