President Joe Biden posted a video after he tested positive for COVID-19 again saying that he’s “feeling fine” as scientists have speculated that Paxlovid-associated rebound cases are more common than initially suspected.
“Hey folks, Joe Biden here. Tested positive this morning. Going to be working from home for the next couple of days. And I’m feeling fine, everything’s good. But Commander and I got a little work to do,” Biden said in the video posted to Twitter late on Saturday. He was referring to his dog, Commander.
White House Doctor Dr. Kevin O’Connor wrote in a letter on Saturday, in confirming Biden’s diagnosis, that people who take Paxlovid can test positive for the virus after testing negative.
“As described last week, acknowledging the potential for so-called ‘rebound’ COVID positivity observed in a small percentage of patients treated with PAXLOVID the President increased his testing cadence, both to protect people around him and to assure early detection of any return of viral replication,” O’Connor said. Now, Biden will engage in “strict isolation procedures,” O’Connor added.
Biden tested positive again for COVID-19 on Saturday morning after using an antigen test, the letter said. It comes days after he returned a negative test and delivered a speech at the White House.
Questions
Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a prominent cardiologist and professor of medicine at George Washington University Hospital wrote that he believes that “COVID rebound” cases sparked by taking Paxlovid are quite common.
“The prior data suggesting ‘rebound’ Paxlovid positivity in the low single digits is outdate[d] and with BA.5 is likely 20-40 percent or even higher,” Reiner wrote on Twitter in response to Biden’s second positive test. He did not provide a study or data to back up his Twitter post.
And Eric Topol, a physician and scientist, said that “Paxlovid rebound is quite common … a retrospective study using [electronic health records] of 11,270 people before BA.5 that suggests it’s 5 percent is way off the mark,” he wrote. Topol was citing a National Institutes of Health-published study from last month.
