President Joe Biden likely has the highly contagious BA.5 variant of COVID-19, though his symptoms “continue to improve,” White House physician Kevin O’Connor said in a July 23 memo.
“His primary symptoms, though less troublesome, now include sore throat, rhinorrhea, loose cough, and body aches,” O’Connor said in the memo, adding that Biden on Friday finished his second full day of Pfizer’s antiviral pill Paxlovid and “continues to tolerate treatment well.”
The president is responding to therapy “as expected,” O’Connor said, adding that his vital signs like pulse, blood pressure, breathing, and temperature “remain entirely normal.”
Based on preliminary sequencing, O’Connor determined that Biden caught the “particularly transmissible” BA.5 variant, which is the strain that’s responsible for between 75 percent and 80 percent of current infections in the United States….