White House physician Sean Conley announced on Saturday that US President Donald Trump is “doing very well” at the Walter Reed Military Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, and is “not on supplemental oxygen right now” besides being “fever free” for the last 24 hours.
Trump was diagnosed with Covid-19 around midnight on Thursday. He was transported to the Walter Reed Hospital on Friday and is scheduled to stay there for “a few days” on need basis, according to the White House.
“At this time, the team and I are extremely happy with the progress the President has made since Thursday. He had a mild cough and some nasal congestion and fatigue, all of which are now resolving and improving,” Conley said.
The team of doctors announced that Trump’s cardiac function and kidney function are normal.
“The President this morning is not on oxygen, not having difficulty breathing or walking around with the White House medical unit upstairs,” the physician said.
Conley reported that the hospital plans to complete a five-day treatment course for Remdesivir. Trump has already got the first dose.
The “big plan for today” is for Trump to “eat, drink and stay hydrated”.
On the basis of the three memos released by Trump’s Press Secretary, we also know that Trump was injected with Regeneron, a polyclonal antibody cocktail. Regeneron has not yet been approved by the FDA as a treatment for Covid-19.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has wished US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump a quick recovery after the couple tested positive for the novel coronavirus, a state-media report said on Saturday.
According to the report by Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Kim in his message “offered his sympathy to the President and the First Lady”.
“He sincerely hoped that they would be recovered as soon as possible. He hoped they will surely overcome it. He sent warm greetings to them,” Yonhap News Agency quoted the KCNA report as saying.
This is the first time that Kim has sent a message to a leader of a country wishing recovery after they tested positive for Covid-19.
Trump tweeted early Friday morning that he and his wife had tested positive for coronavirus.
The President has been admitted to the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington from where he will be working for the few days, limiting his campaigning in the month before the presidential election.
Melania Trump is staying on at the White House.
Twitter has categorically said that it will proactively remove tweets by those who wish for US President Donald Trump’s death on the platform and will put their accounts into a “read only” mode for violating its policies.
After Trump announced on Friday that he and his wife Melania Trump had tested positive for Covid-19, several people took to Twitter, openly calling for Trump’s death from the deadly respiratory disease.
Twitter told Motherboard on Saturday that users are not allowed to openly hope for Trump’s death on the platform and that tweets that do so “will have to be removed”.
On its ‘abusive behaviour’ policy page, Twitter says: “We do not tolerate content that wishes, hopes or expresses a desire for death, serious bodily harm or fatal disease against an individual or group of people.
“This includes, but is not limited to, hoping that someone dies as a result of a serious disease.”
Trump has been admitted to the nation’s premier military hospital in Washington for several days, limiting his campaigning in the crucial month before the November 3 US presidential elections.
His doctor Sean Conley said on Friday night that he had recommended moving Trump to the Walter Reed Military Medical Centre after consulting specialists from there and the Johns Hopkins University.
The Walter Reed hospital, which has among the best equipment and experts, is usually the first stop for military personnel wounded in wars abroad.
Facebook, however, says that its policy distinguishes between public figures and private individuals because “we want to allow discussion, which often includes critical commentary of people who are featured in the news or who have a large public audience”.
“For public figures, we remove attacks that are severe as well as certain attacks where the public figure is directly tagged in the post or comment,” Facebook says.
The report said that what this means is that “it’s OK to post on Facebook” that you hope Trump dies, so long as you do not tag him in the post or “purposefully expose” him to “calls for death, serious disease, epidemic disease, or disability”.
US stock markets slumped but regained some losses triggered by news that President Donald Trump had tested positive for coronavirus weeks before the presidential election.
All three main indexes – the Dow Jones, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq – fell between 1 per cent and 2.2 per cent in early trade on Friday. But hopes of aid for the airline industry helped lift shares at mid-day. The Dow closed down just 0.48 per cent, the BBC reported.
Top Democrat Nancy Pelosi said relief for airlines was “imminent”.
While she had previously called for a comprehensive aid bill, she said Congress was now prepared to advance support focused on the airlines, which warned this week they were moving forward with plans to cut more than 30,000 jobs.
“We will either enact… stand-alone legislation or achieve this as part of a comprehensive negotiated relief bill, extending for another six months the Payroll Support Program,” Pelosi said in a statement. “As relief for airline workers is being advanced, the airline industry must delay these devastating job cuts.”
United Airlines and American Airlines, the two firms that ad announced massive cuts, shot into positive territory following the comments, ending the day up more than 2 per cent.
The gains helped lift shares more widely with the exception of the Nasdaq. The Dow Jones closed 0.48 per cent lower, the S&P 500 index dropped 0.9 per cent, and the tech-focused Nasdaq fell 2.2 per cent.
In London, the FTSE 100 index recovered from falls early in the day, closing up nearly 0.4 per cent at 5,902.1. In France, the Cac-40 ended essentially flat, while Germany’s Dax index fell 0.3 per cent.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked US President Donald Trump’s ban on issuing work visas saying such “a radical change in policy” does not serve the public interest.
Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Federal Court in San Francisco delivered the injunction on Thursday in a case filed by trade organisations representing tech, manufacturing and retail companies that recruit professionals from abroad.
The judgment applies to all categories of H visas for professionals and their families, L visas for employees transferred to work in the US, and J visas for scholars, trainees and some students.
Judge White’s order is only temporary pending a final decision on the case or an appeal.
On June 25, Trump ordered the US embassies to stop processing the work visa categories till the end of the year because of the high unemployment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The judge wrote that Trump’s order negatively affects “hundreds of thousands of American businesses of all sizes and economic sectors” belonging to the groups that brought the suit.
“The benefits of supporting American business and predictability in their governance will inure to the public,” he said.
TechNet, a group representing technology companies that challenged the Trump order, welcomed the decision.
Its CEO Linda Moore said, “We must ensure that visa programs remain in place to fill critical high-skilled labour shortages. Any policy or order that hinders American companies’ ability to find high-skilled workers only harms our economic recovery at this critical time.”
Companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, GM and Amazon.
National Association of Manufacturers pointed out that the US was competing for talent with other countries and this was a short-term win but immigration laws have to be reformed “for a long-term win for manufacturers.”
Its General Counsel Linda Kelly said, “We are competing with the rest of the world to find and develop top talent to support innovation in our industry. Today’s decision is a temporary win for manufacturers committed to building that innovation in the United States.”