“For the next few days, I’d want him 50 feet away from an ICU, not a helicopter ride,” one leading doctor said.
But even after being given dexamethasone, patients who required oxygen still had a mortality rate of about 20%. “These are not miracle drugs,” Wachter said.authorized for emergency use in May, and a cocktail of two monoclonal antibodies against the coronavirus, developed by the biotech company Regeneron.
. Both have yet to be proved effective. To require oxygen and to be put on remdesivir and dexamethasone so quickly after becoming infected suggests that Trump’s illness was fairly severe, though it is unlikely that a typical COVID-19 patient with the same symptoms would have been given such intensive treatment.We do know that Trump was given a lung scan, which Conley said delivered “expected findings.” But the president's doctors have refused to answer multiple questions about what his lung scans show, citing medical privacy. A lung scan would reveal whether the coronavirus has caused significant damage to the president’s lungs, such as pneumonia or inflammation. But it could also show evidence of previous, known lung conditions. Notably, Conley did not say that Trump’s scan was normal.Today, Conley also said: “He has not been on any fever-reducing medications for over 72 hours,” DexamethasoneThe other big uncertainty is when Trump got infected, as Conley has refused to answer questions about when Trump last tested negative before the positive results he received on Thursday.Doctors warned that patients in the second week of the disease can suddenly get much more seriously ill. “Week two is the worst because of the fact that you have the inflammatory response to the virus,” Cedric Dark, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told BuzzFeed News. In the most severe cases, patients may experience a “cytokine storm,” an aggressive inflammatory immune response that causes severe lung damage. If unchecked, it can lead to multiple organ failure and death. So knowing when exactly the president was infected and started experiencing symptoms can help assess his risks of a serious relapse. “If we’re on week two of symptoms, then I’d feel more comfortable that he’s not going to get worse,” Dark said. “If on the other hand the president has been honest about his symptoms, then I’d be more concerned that he needs to be on alert until at least this weekend.” The White House has its own advanced medical facility — so for Trump to return home isn’t like a regular patient being discharged from the hospital. “The level of monitoring he can have at the White House is just as good as you can get on a regular hospital floor in America,” Dark said. Still, given the White House does not have an ICU, Wachter said that he would want to keep Trump under close observation at Walter Reed for a few days more, because of how rapidly patients can deteriorate, releasing him from the hospital only after three to four days of steady improvement without requiring oxygen. Deterioration remains a possibility, Wachter warned. “There has got to be a least a 30% chance that he will get worse.” Even patients who recover from the initial illness can experience longer-term problems including lung damage, neurological symptoms, and an increased risk of blood clots.
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