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.”
In accordance with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Biden will again self-isolate for at least five full days. The agency says most cases of rebound remain mild and that serious illness during this period has not been reported.
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 and tested negative for the virus on Tuesday and Wednesday. He was then cleared to leave isolation while wearing a mask indoors. His positive tests place him among the minority of those who are prescribed the drug to experience a rebound case of the 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 it safe for them to be together, in that scenario.” . 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 an initial negative test 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.
Patients should be re-isolated for at least 5 days. According to CDC guidelines, they can end their isolation period after 5 full days if the fever has resolved for 24 hours (without using fever-reducing medications) and symptoms improve. The patient must wear a mask for a total of 10 days after rebound symptoms begin.” Paxlovid has been shown to significantly reduce serious illness and death among those most vulnerable to COVID-19. Health officials in The United States has encouraged those who test positive to consult 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 “immunoevasive”.
“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.