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WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump appeared in public Friday night for the first time since he was struck by COVID-19, while boarding his Marine One helicopter for a flight to a military hospital.
Trump left the White House and raised his thumb but did not speak. Crew members, Secret Service agents and White House personnel covered their faces to protect themselves from the president aboard the helicopter.
In his first public comments since his diagnosis, Trump said he believes he is “doing very well,” in a short video message posted on his Twitter account.
“I want to thank everyone for the tremendous support. I am going to Walter Reed Hospital. I think I am doing very well. But we will make sure that things work out,” Trump said.
“The First Lady is doing very well,” he added.
The White House said the “a few days” visit to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center was precautionary and that Trump would continue to work from the hospital’s presidential suite, which is equipped to allow him to fulfill his official duties.
“President Trump is in a good mood, has mild symptoms and has been working all day,” said press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
“As a precaution and on the recommendation of his physician and medical experts, the president will work from the presidential offices in Walter Reed for the next few days.”
LEE: Trump will fulfill his duties ‘without interruptions’ while recovering from COVID-19: doctor of the president of the USA.
Earlier on Friday, the White House said the White House doctor had injected Trump with an experimental cocktail of antibodies.
He received an intravenous dose of the dual antibody from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, said his physician, Navy Commander Dr. Sean Conley.
Trump was also taking immune system boosters, zinc and vitamin D, aspirin, and other generic drugs.
Regeneron’s drug REGN-COV2 is part of a class of experimental COVID-19 drugs known as monoclonal antibodies – manufactured copies of human antibodies to the virus that are being studied for use in patients with early disease.
Just a month before the presidential election, Trump’s revelation that he was positive for the virus came in a tweet around 1 a.m. after he returned from an afternoon political fundraiser. He had gone ahead, saying nothing to the crowd, even though he knew he had been exposed to an aide with the disease that has infected millions in the United States and killed more than a million people worldwide.
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First lady Melania Trump also tested positive, the president said, and several others in the White House have as well, raising concerns that the White House or even Trump himself may have further spread the virus.
Trump has spent much of the year downplaying the threat of the virus, rarely wearing a protective mask and urging states and cities to “reopen” and reduce or eliminate closure rules.
The president’s doctor said in a memo late Friday that Trump received a dose of an experimental antibody cocktail from Regeneron that is in clinical trials.
Dr. Conley said that Trump “remains fatigued but in a good mood” and that a team of experts was evaluating both the president and the first lady on next steps.
The first lady, who is 50, has a “mild cough and headache,” Conley reported, and the rest of the first family, including the Trumps’ son Barron, who lives in the White House, tested negative.
LEE: Trump’s age and health problems increase his risk of contracting the COVID-19 disease
Both Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris tested negative, according to their campaign. Vice President Mike Pence tested negative for the virus on Friday morning and “remains in good health,” his spokesman said.
Trump’s Supreme Court candidate, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was with him and many others on Saturday and has been in a Capitol meeting with lawmakers, also tested negative, the White House said.
Trump’s diagnosis is sure to have a destabilizing effect on Washington and around the world, raising questions about the extent to which the virus has spread to the highest levels of the U.S. government. Hours before Trump announced that he had contracted. the virus, the White House said a senior aide who had traveled with him during the week had tested positive.
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