President Donald Trump will head back to the White House on Monday to continue his coronavirus treatment there, departing Walter Reed medical center after spending the weekend hospitalized in the wake of his diagnosis.
“I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good!” he wrote in a tweet.
"Don’t be afraid of Covid," Trump added of the virus that has infected more than 7.4 million Americans and killed nearly 210,000. "Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”
Trump’s discharge comes as the White House faces accusations of a lack of transparency about the severity of the president’s illness, and as the president has sought to project some semblance of normalcy despite contracting the virus.
His return to the White House comes after his medical team said Sunday that the president could be discharged from the hospital “as early as tomorrow” and “continue his treatment course” there. He was first transferred to Walter Reed on Friday evening out of what the White House said was an “abundance of caution.” His aides have been eager to show that Trump is still carrying out the duties of the office despite his hospitalization.
But Sean Conley, the president’s physician, also appeared to confirm Sunday that Trump’s condition is more serious than the White House had so far acknowledged.
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows had said earlier Monday morning that officials were “still optimistic” the president would leave Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and return to the White House later in the day.
“Spoke to the President this morning. He continued to improve overnight and is ready to get back to a normal working schedule,” Meadows said in a statement to Fox News.
“He will meet with his doctors and nurses this morning to make further assessments of his progress,” Meadows added. “We are still optimistic that he will be able to return to the White House later today.”
In a subsequent interview on “Fox & Friends,” Meadows cautioned that the “determination has not been made yet” to release Trump from the hospital, and said a final call “won’t be made until later today.”
“The doctors will actually have an evaluation some time late morning. And then the president, in consultation with the doctors, will make a decision on whether to discharge him later today,” Meadows said.
Trump's discharge comes at a potentially delicate time. Some patients see sharp declines about seven to 10 days after infection. Trump, whose age and weight increase his risk of severe disease, announced his diagnosis early Friday — four days ago.
The drugs Trump is receiving, and some of the details revealed by Trump's medical team, suggest that the president has a moderate to severe case of Covid-19.
Trump has received two experimental drugs, as well as one steroid generally reserved for patients with severe or critical coronavirus cases.
The president’s medical team also revealed Sunday that Trump had received oxygen therapy twice for limited periods, and that his blood oxygen levels have dipped below 94 percent — a worrisome threshold for patients indicating a moderate or severe case of Covid-19.
The White House also has refused to reveal more detailed information about Trump’s Covid-19 tests over the course of the past week, and throughout the weekend, the president’s aides and doctors offered contradictory assessments of his health and the timeline of his infection.
For example, after Conley said Saturday morning that the president was “doing very well,” Meadows told reporters that Trump’s “vitals over the last 24 hours were very concerning” and warned: “We’re still not on a clear path to a full recovery.”
On Monday, Meadows disputed reports that Trump had been infuriated by those dire remarks to the press and sought to justify his evaluation of the president’s health.
“I don’t know where anybody is getting the ‘furious’ part … because the president and I have been together for the last 72 hours or more,” Meadows said.
“Listen, I think it’s important that we’re clear about the risks that the president had, and there was some real concern Friday morning — the doctor and I talking Friday morning — there was real concern that helped us make the decision to come to Walter Reed,” he added.
Meadows also defended Trump amid harsh criticism of his decision Sunday afternoon to greet supporters gathered outside Walter Reed, waving at them from inside a black SUV in his presidential motorcade and potentially endangering his Secret Service detail.
An attending physician at Walter Reed denounced the impromptu drive-by as “insanity” and noted on Twitter that the risk of Covid-19 transmission inside Trump’s hermetically sealed vehicle “is as high as it gets outside of medical procedures.”
But Meadows seemingly argued Monday that the agents accompanying the president had already been exposed to possible infection by Trump prior to participating in the motorcade.
“You know, they’re criticizing, ‘Well, he put his Secret Service agent at risk.’ Well, the Secret Service agent — how do we think that we got here?” Meadows said.
“I mean, we came here in Marine One. The Secret Service agent that is with him has been with him. He’s been with him in cars. And yet, we took additional precautions with PPE and others to make sure that they were protected,” he said, adding that “a number of folks are trying to just make a big deal of that.”
Lauren Morello contributed to this report.
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