U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to the media as he arrives at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S. July 20, 2022.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
President Joe Biden on Saturday tested positive for Covid-19 once again after consecutive days of testing negative for the virus, his physician said.
Biden is experiencing no new symptoms and “continues to feel quite well,” Dr. Kevin O’Connor said in a memo shared by the White House.
But he will nevertheless “reinitiate strict isolation procedures,” the presidential physician wrote.
O’Connor had previously warned of the potential for a “rebound” in positive test results, a phenomenon among a small percentage of patients who, like Biden, used the antiviral medication Paxlovid as part of their treatment.
Biden had accordingly “increased his testing cadence, both to protect people around him and to assure early detection of any return of viral replication,” O’Connor wrote in the latest memo, which was made public Saturday afternoon.
The president tested negative for Covid on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, but tested positive on Saturday morning from an antigen test. “This is fact represents ‘rebound’ positivity,” O’Connor wrote.
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