The president emerged from isolation on Wednesday after testing negative for the virus and completing a five-day course of Paxlovid, the antiviral treatment from Pfizer. White House physician Kevin O'Connor said in his Saturday announcement that Biden had increased his testing frequency because of the possibility for a rebound infection. Biden continued to test negative on Tuesday evening, Wednesday morning, Thursday morning, and Friday morning, but the virus reemerged Saturday morning.
While the President is not suffering from any symptoms, his positive test has brought questions about how common Paxlovid rebounds really are. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a health advisory in May about the antiviral, which is being prescribed to over 40,000 people per day, addressing the rebound risk. The agency admitted that there were cases where the illness returned, but it suggested that none of those affected had reported severe symptoms. The CDC also said there was no evidence that a second prescription of Paxlovid would resolve any rebound symptoms.
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With Biden undergoing no symptoms, Dr. O'Connor said it was not necessary for him to undergo a second course of the antiviral drug. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who also went through a Paxlovid rebound in June, took two courses of the treatment. Unlike Biden, though, his symptoms had returned.
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"When you look at the studies, it generally does not occur very often," Fauci, who leads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and is the White House chief medical adviser, said of the potential for rebounds on MSNBC's Morning Joe Tuesday. He noted, however, that "anecdotal cases" suggest rebounds are more common now than they were when clinical trials were conducted.
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Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator, said back in May that rebound infections were something they were "looking at very carefully," adding that those cases were "not leading to people getting particularly sick."
Jha expressed a similar opinion at a White House press briefing last Thursday, saying: "If you look at Twitter, it feels like everybody has rebound, but it turns out there’s actually clinical data. If you look at major health systems that have given out Paxlovid to tens of thousands of people, rebound rates are around 5%. There are some studies that say it’s maybe 7-8%, some that say it’s 2%, but it’s in the single digits. So it happens; it’s not that frequent."
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"But here’s the key point," he said. "When people have rebound, they don’t end up in the hospital. They don’t end up particularly sick. And the goal of Paxlovid is to keep people from getting seriously ill."
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