Donald Trump has claimed he no longer has coronavirus and is now “immune” to Covid-19 as he prepares to return to the campaign trail on Monday for a barrage of rallies in swing states in his pursuit of a second term in the White House.
Numerous opinion polls have continued to show the US president trailing his Democratic challenger Joe Biden by a significant margin nationally, adding urgency to Trump’s desire to get back to the in-person appearances he believes are key to his success on the 3 November election day.
He will appear at a rally in Sanford, Florida, on Monday night and follow up with events in Pennsylvania and Iowa on Tuesday and Wednesday, all closely-contested states he won by thin margins in 2016 but now appear to be leaning towards Biden.
Yet questions remain over the state of the 74-year-old president’s health following his infection with Covid-19 and a three-night stay in the Walter Reed military medical center in Maryland. He was discharged one week ago, but the White House and medical professionals have refused to release details on his lung scans or when he last tested negative for Covid-19.
In a wide ranging 30-minute interview on Fox News on Sunday, Trump insisted he was completely free of the virus, without providing medical evidence, and further claimed, implausibly, he was immune after receiving an experimental cocktail of antibodies, antiviral drugs and steroids during his hospital stay.
“To me it’s a cure, it’s much more than a therapeutic,” Trump said. “Once you’ve recovered, you’re immune. I am immune… maybe for a short time, maybe for a long time. The president is in very good shape,” Trump said, adding that immunity gave him a “protective glow”.
There are, however, some documented cases of patients who have recovered from coronavirus being reinfected.
Later on Sunday, Twitter flagged a tweet in which Trump claimed he was immune to the coronavirus, saying it violated the social media platform’s rules about misleading information related to the pandemic.
“A total and complete sign off from White House Doctors yesterday. That means I can’t get it (immune), and can’t give it. Very nice to know,” Trump said in the tweet.“This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to Covid-19,” Twitter’s disclaimer read.
A Twitter spokeswoman told Reuters that the tweet made “misleading health claims” about Covid-19 and that engagements with the post would be “significantly limited”, as is standard in such cases.
The White House physician who oversaw Trump’s treatment at Walter Reed has spoken only in general terms about the president’s condition. In a memo released late on Saturday, Dr Sean Conley cleared Trump to return to public events, saying “he is no longer considered a transmission risk”.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
