Zeke Miller and Josh Boak, The Associated Press Published Saturday, July 30, 2022 2:57 PM EDT Last Updated Saturday, July 30, 2022 5:10 PM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden tested positive for COVID-19 again Saturday, just over three days after being cleared to come out of coronavirus isolation, the White House said, in a rare case of ” rebound” after treatment with an anti-coronavirus. viral drug
White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor said in a letter that Biden “has not experienced any recurrence of symptoms and continues to feel quite well.” O’Connor said there is “no reason to restart treatment at this time.”
In accordance with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Biden will again self-isolate for at least five days. He will be isolated in the White House until he tests negative. The agency says most cases of rebound remain mild and that serious illness during this period has not been reported.
Just like when Biden first tested positive, the White House tried to show he was still working. The president tweeted a photo of himself masked and strapless, showing him signing a statement adding individual assistance to flood survivors in Kentucky.
The president followed up by tweeting a 12-second video of himself on a White House balcony with his dog, Commander.
“I’m fine, everything’s fine,” Biden said, a pair of aviator sunglasses in hand. “But the Commander and I have some work to do.”
Biden’s positive word came – he had been negative on Friday morning – just two hours after the White House announced a presidential visit to Michigan this coming Tuesday to highlight the passage of a bill to promote domestic manufacturing high technology Biden had also been scheduled to visit his home in Wilmington, Delaware, on Sunday morning, where first lady Jill Biden has been staying while the president tested positive. Both trips have been canceled because Biden is back in isolation.
Biden, 79, was treated with the antiviral drug Paxlovid after he first tested positive on July 21. He tested negative for the virus last Tuesday and Wednesday. He was then cleared to leave isolation while wearing a mask indoors. His positive tests put him among the minority of those who were prescribed the drug to experience a rebound case of the virus.
The White House’s COVID-19 coordinator, Dr. Ashish Jha, told reporters Monday that the data “suggests that 5 to 8 percent of people have recovered” after treatment with Paxlovid.
“Recognizing the potential for so-called ‘bounceback’ COVID positivity seen in a small percentage of patients treated with Paxlovid, the president increased his testing cadence, to protect those around him and to ensure early detection of any return of viral replication,” O. ‘Connor wrote in his letter.
O’Connor cited negative tests for Biden from Tuesday evening, Wednesday morning, Thursday morning and Friday morning, before Saturday morning’s positive antigen test result. “This represents, indeed, ‘rebound’ positivity,” he wrote.
According to the CDC, people with a COVID rebound should self-isolate for at least five days, and if the fever has resolved for 24 hours without medication and symptoms have improved. The patient “must wear a mask for a total of 10 days after rebound symptoms begin. Some people continue to test positive after day 10, but are considerably less likely to shed infectious virus.”
Both the Food and Drug Administration and Pfizer note that 1 to 2 percent of people in Pfizer’s original study of Paxlovid saw their viral levels rebound after 10 days. The rate was about the same among people taking the drug or the dummy pills, “so it is not clear at this time that this is related to the drug treatment,” according to the FDA.
While Biden tested negative, he again held in-person indoor events and meetings with White House staff and wore a mask, in accordance with CDC guidelines. But the president took off his mask indoors when he delivered remarks Thursday and during a meeting with CEOs at the White House complex.
When asked why Biden appeared to violate CDC protocols, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: “They were socially distanced. They were far enough apart. So we made sure they were together, that they were in this stage”.
Regulators are still studying the prevalence and virulence of rebound cases, but the CDC in May warned doctors that it had been reported to occur anywhere from two days to eight days after initially testing negative for the virus.
“The limited information currently available from case reports suggests that people treated with Paxlovid who experience a rebound of COVID-19 have had mild illness; there are no reports of severe illness,” the agency said at the time.
When Biden was initially released from isolation on Wednesday, O’Connor said the president would “increase his testing cadence” to detect any potential rebound of the virus.
Paxlovid has been shown to significantly reduce serious illness and death among those most vulnerable to COVID-19. U.S. health officials have encouraged those who test positive to check with their doctors or pharmacists to see if they should be prescribed the treatment, despite the risk of a rebound.
Biden is fully vaccinated, having received two doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine shortly before taking office, a first booster shot in September and an additional dose on March 30.
While patients who have recovered from earlier variants of COVID-19 have tended to have high levels of immunity to future reinfection within 90 days, Jha said the BA.5 subvariant that infected Biden has proven to be more “immune evasive”.
“We’ve seen a lot of people get reinfected within 90 days,” he said, adding that officials don’t yet have data on how long those who have recovered from the BA.5 strain have protection against reinfection.