President Biden tested positive for the coronavirus again Saturday morning, a rebound attributed to the Paxlovid treatment he was taking, but has not experienced a recurrence of symptoms, the White House physician said.
Mr. Biden “continues to be doing quite well,” the physician, Dr. Kevin C. O’Connor, said in a note released by the White House. “In this case, there is no reason to restart treatment at this time, but obviously we will continue to watch closely,” he added.
The positive test, however, means Mr. Biden will resume “strict isolation procedures,” as Dr. O’Connor said, according to the medical board. The White House said he would no longer make a planned trip to his home in Wilmington, Del., on Sunday or a work trip to Michigan on Tuesday.
Mr. Biden first tested positive for the virus on July 21. After five days in isolation, he tested negative on Tuesday evening and returned to the Oval Office on Wednesday, declaring that his relatively mild case showed how much progress had been made in the fight against the virus. virus But doctors were looking for signs of a rebound from Paxlovid and have been testing him daily since then. He tested negative on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday before the positive result on Saturday morning.
Paxlovid rebound has become a source of debate between the scientific community and Covid patients. Initial clinical studies suggested that only 1 to 2 percent of patients treated with Paxlovid experienced symptoms again. A June study that has not been peer-reviewed found that of 13,644 adults, about 5 percent tested positive again within 30 days and 6 percent experienced symptoms again.
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But anecdotal accounts of Paxlovid rebounding, including one case involving Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, have drawn widespread attention, leading many to question whether the reported data was still accurate.
“I think this was predictable,” Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a leading cardiologist and professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University Hospital, wrote on Twitter on Saturday after the president’s positive test was disclosed. “Previous data suggesting ‘rebound’ Paxlovid positivity in the low digits is outdated and with BA.5 it is probably 20-40% or even higher.”
In a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study published last month that examined the drug’s success in protecting people from severe cases of Covid-19, researchers wrote that symptoms of a rebound tended to be milder than those felt by a patient during the primary infection and were unlikely to lead to hospitalization.
The CDC issued an emergency health advisory in May that said people experiencing a rebound “should restart isolation and self-isolate again” for at least five days, mirroring general isolation recommendations from the agency for people infected with the virus.
The advisory also said the rebound did not represent reinfection with the virus or the development of resistance to Paxlovid.
Dr. Ashish K. Jha, the White House’s co-ordinator of the Covid-19 response, told reporters when Mr. Biden first tested positive that looking at Twitter, “it looks like everyone has recovered, but it turns out that actually there is clinical data.”
Large health systems, he said, showed that rebounds were rare, with the percentage of Paxlovid recipients experiencing them “in the single digits.”
“When people have recovered, they don’t end up in the hospital,” Dr. Jha said. “They don’t end up particularly sick.” He added: “Paxlovid is working very well to prevent serious illness, rebound or no rebound, and that’s why it was offered to him. And that’s why the president took it.”