The medical team treating President Donald Trump for Covid-19 is monitoring the condition of his lungs after he received supplemental oxygen on Thursday and Friday, but declined on Sunday to provide details of what they had seen.
Trump, 74, who was flown to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Friday, has taken two doses of a five-day course of the intravenous antiviral drug Remdesivir, as well as the steroid dexamethasone, which is used in critical cases.
Dr Sean P Conley acknowledged that Trump's blood oxygen levels had dropped in prior days and that he had run a high fever on Friday morning, admitting that the president's condition had been worse than previously disclosed. Conley said Trump was improving on Sunday.
The briefing came the day after contradictory messages from the White House caused widespread confusion about the president's condition.
His illness has upended his re-election campaign as it seeks to fend off Democratic challenger Joe Biden in the final month of the race, and rattled financial markets.
Asked what tests had revealed about the condition of Trump's lungs, Conley replied, "There's some expected findings, but nothing of any major clinical concern."
Conley's response suggests the X-rays revealed some signs of pneumonia, said Dr Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University.
"The expected finding is that he has evidence of pneumonia in the X-ray. If it was normal they would just say it is normal," Adalja said.
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