US President Joe Biden has tested positive for COVID again – after taking Paxlovid – in what a White House doctor on Saturday called a “recovering” case.
Biden – who initially tested positive on July 21, after a week of traveling around the Middle East – tested negative for the virus on Tuesday night and again last Wednesday morning, when he ended up in quarantine.
He also tested negative on Thursday and Friday morning before testing positive again Saturday morning, according to a letter from the presidential physician Dr Kevin O’Connor to the House Press Secretary. White Karine Jean-Pierre, received and posted Twitter by one Reuters reporter.
On Saturday, the president said via Twitter that he would return to isolation despite the fact that he is not experiencing new symptoms.
“Everyone, I tested positive for COVID again today,” he wrote. “I have no symptoms, but I will isolate for the safety of everyone around. I’m still working, and will be back on the road soon. “
‘Rebound COVID,’ Paxlovid and others
Biden was treated with the COVID-19 antiviral drug Paxlovid on the day he was diagnosed, according to many news outlets. It’s a pill approved to treat COVID-19 in high-risk adults such as the elderly, which has been approved for emergency use by the US Food and Drug Administration.
But the drug is known for its “recurrence” cases, which the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls a “short-term return of symptoms”.
However, such a recovery could happen with or without Paxlovid, said Andy Pekosz, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Luck on Saturday.
“It’s not uncommon for people to test positive a few days after testing negative for COVID-19,” he said. “What I think people are more focused on these days is if this could be Paxlovid’s recovery, it means he’s going to have a relapse of the virus.”
Although the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that COVID outbreaks are rare, they may be more common than we know, as most individuals with COVID stop testing after they receive it. negative results.
“The White House does a great job of checking in on people every day,” Pekosz said. “They are more likely to come across these rare things with that kind of frequency.”
O’Connor writes: The president’s rebound positive test is an antigen test, or rapid test. An antigen test is superior at assessing whether someone is shedding live virus and therefore infectious, he said, adding that a positive antigen test is “probably a a good reason to go back to quarantine.”
Fauci Paxlovid’s Restoration
When diagnosed with COVID in June, the president’s chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci has been prescribed antiretroviral medication due to his advanced age, which puts him at greater risk of a severe outcome from COVID, despite being fully vaccinated and boostered twice.
Fauci later said he had undergone a Paxlovid rehab.
“After finishing five Paxlovid days, I turned negative for the antigen test for three days in a row,” Fauci, 81, said at an event at Foreign Policy’s Global Health ForumBloomberg reported. “And then on the fourth day, to be absolutely sure, I checked myself again.”
“I reverted back to the positive state.”
Fauci then told New York Times Paxlovid kept him in the hospital and prevented his infection from becoming more serious than it was initially, saying, “Paxlovid did what it was supposed to do.”
Fauci started a second round of Paxlovid’s treatment when symptoms appeared “much worse than the first”, he said. In May, the CDC issued a health advisory on such relapses, saying there was no evidence that additional treatment was needed for those who recovered.
In June, Pfizer, the company that makes Paxlovid, has announced that it will stop adding new entrants to the trial of the drug in COVID patients at low risk of hospitalization and death. According to Bloomberg, the study did not demonstrate that the drug significantly reduced symptoms or hospital admissions and deaths.
But Paxlovid could be sure to hit a bad rap, warns Pekosz.
“I would still point to the fact that it’s working in keeping people out of the hospital — that’s the most important thing right now,” he said, adding that it may need retooling to deal with it. better than the Omicron sub-variables.
How long is the quarantine?
CDC currently advises COVID-positive individuals to quarantine for five days before returning to normal life (and face coverings in public for an additional five days). The recommended quarantine period is 10 days until December, when the federal health agency halves.
But “there is no data to support 5 days or anything shorter than 10 days,” says Amy Barczak, MD, a physician in the Department of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital. recently said Nature.
Some scientists have question the rationale behind the policy since the CDC introduced it late last year. And now critics have more data to back up their claims: Virus spread can occur after 10 days in even healthy, vaccinated adults, according to a London preprint. published this month.
Some scientists recommend that people stop isolating only when they test negative at home, rather than relying solely on the CDC’s five-day rule.
Biden did, however, test negative five and then six days after contracting the disease before ending his quarantine. The White House has say Biden will “go beyond” the CDC’s five-day guidelines and wait until the test results are negative before returning to public life.
He doesn’t seem to expect a rebound.
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