Joe Biden tests positive for coronavirus | International

He has managed to get rid of the pandemic for two and a half years, but the time for the coronavirus has also come for the president of the United States, Joe Biden. Biden, 79, has tested positive for covid this Thursday morning, and has “very mild symptoms,” as announced by the White House in a statement sent today.

It is signed by the spokeswoman for the presidency, Karine Jean-Pierre, and recalls that the president “is fully vaccinated and has two booster doses.” “He experiences very mild symptoms,” the text continues (according to his doctor, Kevin O’Connor, he presents, “mainly, rhinorrhea (runny nose) and fatigue, with an occasional dry cough that manifested” on Wednesday afternoon) . “He has started taking Paxlovid [medicamento antiviral que minimiza la severidad del contagio]. In accordance with health guidelines, he will self-isolate at the White House and continue to perform all his duties during that time. She has spoken with members of the White House staff by phone this morning and will participate in her planned meetings this morning by phone and Zoom from her residence. She (…) she will continue to work in isolation until she tests negative. Once that happens, she will go back to work in person.”

On his show today, he was scheduled to travel to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to speak at his university about recent gun control measures taken on Capitol Hill in response to an epidemic of mass shootings sweeping the country. His day would end in Wilmington, Delaware, where she spends many of her family weekends.

Biden’s positive comes amid a robust wave of cases in the United States, whose epidemiological map is dominated by new subvariants, such as BA.4 and BA.5, which science considers highly contagious and prepared to circumvent the protection provided by the vaccines. The virus has besieged Biden in recent months, with infections from very close members of her family (such as her daughter Ashley) and from her Administration (including Vice President Kamala Harris). He has not changed his schedule of activities in this time, and during his recent trip to the Middle East, despite the fact that he made it a point not to shake hands with his interlocutors as a precaution against the pandemic, he broke his own rule several times. occasions.

The last renowned infected in Washington power circles has been Representative Bennie Thompson, a congressman from Mississippi and chairman of the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on Capitol Hill. He announced on Tuesday that he had tested positive and that this Thursday night he would not be in the eighth (and, for now, last) session in which the group of nine congressmen he leads present the conclusions of a year and a half of investigations into what happened that day. Leading the audience, which will air in prime time, will be Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney.

“In a spirit of transparency, the White House will provide a daily update on the President’s status,” the statement continues. Protocol dictates that all people who have had close contact with Biden will be informed throughout the morning in Washington. Among them are members of Congress and journalists who accompanied him during his trip on Wednesday. Biden spent the day in Massachusetts to talk about the challenges of climate change and visited an offshore wind factory owned by the Spanish company Iberdrola in the East Coast state.

The last test had been done on Tuesday, and it was negative. As a spokeswoman for the First Lady, Jill Biden, has clarified, she has not, at the moment, tested positive.

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