US President Donald Trump, who on Friday said he was positive for coronavirus and then was admitted to Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, announced that he will be discharged at 6.30pm local time (midnight and a half in Italy). He then urged “not to be afraid of COVID-19” and not to let it “dominate your life”, adding that he feels “better than twenty years ago” thanks to the knowledge and drugs developed against the disease in recent months ( under his administration, he says). Trump will thus return to the White House, where a coronavirus outbreak has been recorded in recent days, with several people testing positive among his staff, his advisers and his family.
I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2020
The fact that Trump is discharged so quickly, after only three days of hospitalization, was commented with surprise, considering that by age and state of health he is among the subjects at risk and that his real health conditions are still not very clear. . Sean P. Conley, Trump’s personal physician, said today in a press conference that “in the past 24 hours the president’s conditions have continually improved, and he has met or exceeded the standards necessary for discharge from our hospital.” Conley added that Trump has received a third dose of the antiviral remdesivir, and that he continues to be on dexamethasone, a steroid anti-inflammatory that is normally given to worsening patients and not those about to be discharged. Conley did not comment on the state of the infection in Trump’s lungs, nor did he give any further information about how he received the oxygen, as indicated by the doctors who had assisted him in recent days.
Conley’s press conference therefore left a lot of uncertainty about Trump’s condition, on which updates from his staff and spokespersons have so far been partial and elusive. The American newspapers, citing sources that have had to do with Trump’s medical assistance these days, had described a more serious clinical picture than that presented by the White House. Specifically, doctors said it fell below 93 percent blood oxygenation twice, a level beyond which COVID-19 symptoms are generally considered severe.
To attract criticism from the opposition and journalists was then the passage of the tweet that minimizes the coronavirus. For months, Trump has publicly underestimated the effects of COVID-19, demonstrating a general disregard for the hygiene and prevention measures recommended by scientists and long refusing to wear a face mask and avoid crowds. Like the one that occurred at the White House on Saturday, September 26 to announce the candidacy of Amy Coney Barrett as a Supreme Court Justice, and which is believed to have been the key moment in the spread of the coronavirus in Trump’s staff.
On Sunday, Trump showed himself walking a stretch of road outside the hospital where he was hospitalized, in the midst of a crowd of people and in a car with some members of his escort, evidently exposed to a considerable risk of contagion.
Trump drives by the press and supporters outside Walter Reed hospital. pic.twitter.com/3phtKthqTH
— Philip Crowther (@PhilipinDC) October 4, 2020
Several doctors yesterday had told the Washington Post that dismissing Trump soon would be very risky. Both because it could infect dozens of other people – barring big surprises, it’s probably still positive – and because it is still possible that side effects will develop in the next 7-10 days: especially to the injection of antibodies, an experimental treatment whose consequences on the organism are not yet known exactly.
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