Updated Oct 7, 2020 - Politics & Policy

White House physician says Trump has been "symptom-free for over 24 hours"

Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

President Trump has been "symptom-free" from the coronavirus for over 24 hours, White House physician Sean Conley said in a Wednesday update.

The state of play: Conley's letter also says that Trump has not received or needed supplemental oxygen since his initial hospitalization and that lab tests on Monday showed the president has signs of coronavirus antibodies in his blood that were not present last Thursday.

Worth noting: The memo does not address some of the outstanding questions about Trump's health that Conley has avoided answering at press briefings.

  • It includes no information on what medications Trump is still taking. Some of the treatments Conley said the president had been prescribed require multiday courses.
  • It also includes no information about the timing of Trump's last negative test, which Conley refused to provide at a Monday briefing. Trump publicly announced that he tested positive early Friday morning.

The big picture: The CDC states that a person can be contagious for up to 10 days after coronavirus symptoms resolve. It also notes that it can take anywhere from one to three weeks after an infection for the body to create antibodies.

  • One of the experimental treatments given to the president was an antibody cocktail from Regeneron.
  • Preliminary data show that the patients most likely to benefit from the experimental cocktail had undetectable antibodies and were early in the course of the disease — a similar profile to Trump, a Regeneron spokesperson told NBC's Peter Alexander.
  • It "is likely that the second test is detecting REGN-COV2 antibodies," the spokesperson said, referencing signs of coronavirus antibodies in the president's blood.

Read the update:

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