Biden tests positive for COVID-19 and is experiencing 'very mild symptoms,' White House announces
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- President Joe Biden tested positive for COVID-19, the White House announced on Thursday.
- Biden is fully vaccinated and received booster shots in late September 2021 and March 2022.
- Breakthrough cases have become increasingly common with the highly contagious Omicron variant and its subvariant BA.5.
President Joe Biden has tested positive for COVID-19, the White House announced on Thursday.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that Biden, who tested positive on Thursday morning is "experiencing very mild symptoms" and "has begun taking Paxlovid," an antiviral drug.
Biden's physician Kevin O'Connor said in a memo that Biden's symptoms are fatigue, a runny nose, and a dry cough that began Wednesday evening.
"The President is fully vaccinated and twice-boosted, so I anticipate that he will respond favorably, as most maximally protected patients do," O'Connor wrote.
—Gabe Fleisher (@WakeUp2Politics) July 21, 2022
Biden tested positive one day after traveling to Massachusetts and Rhode Island to discuss climate change, and four days after returning from an action-packed overseas trip to the Middle East that included meetings with world leaders like Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lipid in Jerusalem and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah.
Vice President Kamala Harris tested negative on Thursday, according to a spokesperson. Harris has spoken with the president. Harris will remain masked "following the advice of the White House medical team." Harris previously had no public events on her schedule for the day. Harris previously recovered from a COVID-19 case this past spring.
Biden rode Air Force One to and from New England on Wednesday with Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, as well as Reps. Bill Keating and Jake Auchincloss, who posed for photos with Biden on the plane. On the ground, he appeared with elected officials including Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee and Sen. Sheldon White House of Rhode Island.
—Rep. Jake Auchincloss (@RepAuchincloss) July 20, 2022
First Lady Jill Biden tested negative on Thursday morning, her office told Politico, and she still planning to make scheduled trips to Georgia and Michigan that are part of her summer learning tour with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
Biden received his first two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in December 2020 and January 2021, and received two Pfizer booster shots in September 2021 and March 2022, making his case a so-called breakthrough infection.
Infections in fully vaccinated people have become increasingly common with the Omicron variants, but the shots have proven highly effective in preventing serious illness, hospitalization, and death.
The rapid global spread of Omicron, first detected and identified in southern Africa in November 2021, caused a massive spike in coronavirus cases in the US beginning in early December that peaked in mid-January 2022 before leveling off.
Omicron and its BA. 5 subvariant, which has proven especially evasive to prior immunity, have continued to circulate in the Washington, DC, area — and among its prominent politicians and power players.
Vice President Kamala Harris announced that she tested positive on April 26, and dozens of members of Congress have reported contracting COVID-19 in the past several months.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in early April that she tested positive for COVID-19 the day after attending a bill signing event at the White House where she and other members of Congress, all maskless, gathered around Biden for a photo.
— Brent D. Griffiths contributed to this report.
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