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Biden tests negative for COVID again, will be in isolation until confirmed

President Joe Biden tested negative for COVID-19 on Saturday after a virus case “recovered,” but will remain in isolation until he receives another negative test, his doctor said. he said.

“Strict isolation measures” will continue “out of an abundance of caution,” Dr Kevin O’Connor wrote in a daily update. Posted by White House.

Biden – who initially tested positive on July 21, after a week of travel around the Middle East – tested negative for the virus on July 26 and 27, when he finished his quarantine. .

He also tested negative on July 28 and July 29 before testing positive again on July 30, according to a letter from O’Connor to White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre .

‘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 rebound can happen with or without Paxlovid, Andy Pekosz, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, recently said. Luck.

“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. The antigen test is superior when it comes to assessing whether someone is shedding live virus and therefore infectious, Pekosz said, adding that the antigen test is positive, Pekosz said. is “probably 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 was 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 double-checked myself.”

“I reverted back to the positive state.”

Fauci then told The New York Times that Paxlovid kept him in the hospital and prevented his infection from getting worse than it originally was, 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 the time.

But “there is no data to support five days or anything shorter than 10 days,” said Amy Barczak, 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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