BREAKING: Trump no longer has COVID-19 symptoms, White House physician says
"Overall he continues to do extremely well" – White House physician Dr. Sean Conley
White House physician Sean Conley on Tuesday said President Trump reports "no symptoms" after being discharged from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center following a three-day stay for the coronavirus.
"This morning the President's team of physicians met with him in the Residence. He had a restful first night at home, and today he reports no symptoms," Conley wrote in a memorandum issued Tuesday afternoon.
"Vital signs and physical exam remain stable, with an ambulatory oxygen saturation level of 95-97%. Overall he continues to do extremely well. I will provide updates as we know more," Conley wrote.
Trump tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday evening and was taken to Walter Reed on Friday as a precaution.
Doctors treating Trump said Sunday that the president received supplemental oxygen on Friday after his blood-oxygen level dropped suddenly, raising alarm.
"Late Friday morning, when I returned to the bedside, the president had a high fever, and his oxygen saturation was transiently dipping below 94%," Conley said at the time.
Conley said he recommended the president take supplemental oxygen, which he did for about an hour on Friday. The doctor also said Trump experienced two episodes of "transient drops" in his oxygen levels since his diagnosis Thursday evening. The second episode occurred Saturday morning, which led to doctors treating Trump with dexamethasone, a steroid that relieves inflammation in parts of the body.
"In patients hospitalized with COVID-19, the use of dexamethasone resulted in lower 28-day mortality among those who were receiving either invasive mechanical ventilation or oxygen alone at randomization but not among those receiving no respiratory support," the New England Journal of Medicine reported in July.
The president had a "high fever" on Friday and Saturday, but by Sunday his blood oxygen level stood at 98%, Trump's medical team said. "The president has continued to improve," Conley said.
Meanwhile Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country's top infectious disease expert, said Trump could still go into "reversal."
"He looks fine as you can see the way he looked when he came out of the hospital," Fauci said on CNN on Monday night. "The issue is that he's still early enough in the disease that it's no secret that if you look at the clinical course of people sometimes, when you're five to eight days in, you can have a reversal. A reversal meaning going in the wrong direction and getting into trouble."
But Fauci, an immunologist and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who serves on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, added: "It's unlikely that it will happen, but there need to be heads up for it. He knows it, the physicians know it. So they're going to keep an eye on it, and they're going to try and do that within the confines of the White House, as opposed to in a hospital."
"You're not out of it until you've gone several days out and doing well. But he certainly does look very well. But you don't need me to tell you that. You saw how he came out of the helicopter and into there. He looked like he was in pretty good shape," the doctor said.