Conley Gives Mix of Good, Bad News on Trump's Health

Conley says Trump might be released on Monday
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 4, 2020 11:30 AM CDT
Conley Gives Mix of Good, Bad News on Trump's Health
Dr. Sean Conley, physician to President Donald Trump, briefs reporters at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., Sunday, Oct. 4, 2020.   (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

President Trump's health has "continued to improve" at Walter Reed Medical Center and he might be released Monday, his doctors say—but things were a little worse Saturday than they let on. "If he continues to look and feel as well as he does today, our hope is that we can plan for a discharge as early as tomorrow to the White House where he can continue his treatment course," said Dr. Brian Garibaldi of Johns Hopkins University, per CBS News. Another doctor on Trump's team, Sean Dooley, said Sunday the president is "walking around" and is no longer short of breath. Meanwhile, White House physician Sean Conley revealed that Trump was moved to the hospital after suffering low oxygen levels and a high fever Friday morning. In other details:

  • Conley added that Trump's blood oxygen level abruptly fell on Saturday, the AP reports. He also admitted to downplaying the seriousness of Trump's health problems that day. "I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude of the team, that the president, that his course of illness has had," he said. "Didn't want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction."
  • Conley also said Trump received the steroid dexamethasone on Saturday, the New York Times reports. The drug has benefitted patients with severe cases of COVID-19 but isn't usually for those with moderate or mild cases—and can even be damaging in the early days of the disease.
  • Trump is getting an experimental antibody therapy that fewer than 10 people have received so far, the Washington Post reports. "The VIP treatment around antibodies is ethically troubling and yet there are many, many other things we do to support the president that are different from what you and I get, and we live with it every day," says Robert Wachter, a professor at the University of California at San Francisco.
(Read about Trump's 5-day treatment of remdesivir.)

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