Biden tests positive for COVID, cancels Las Vegas campaign event

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White House says the US president has ‘mild symptoms’ and will self-isolate at his home in Delaware.

United States President Joe Biden has tested positive for COVID-19, forcing him to cancel a campaign event in Las Vegas, as pressure builds on him to drop his re-election bid because of his age.

White House Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday that Biden, 81, was experiencing “mild symptoms” and will fly to his home in Delaware, where he will “self-isolate and continue to carry out all of his duties fully”.

Jean-Pierre said Biden planned to spend a long weekend at his Delaware beach house. It was unclear how long the sickness would keep him for the campaign trail.

Minutes after the announcement, the president’s motorcade was on the move to the Las Vegas airport, and as he boarded Air Force One, Biden told reporters: “Good, I feel good”.

Dr Kevin O’Connor, the president’s physician, said in a note that Biden “presented this afternoon with upper respiratory symptoms, to include rhinorhea [runny nose] and non-productive cough, with general malaise”.

After the positive COVID-19 test, Biden was prescribed the antiviral drug Paxlovid and has taken his first dose, O’Connor said.

News of Biden’s illness had first been shared by the CEO of Unidos US, a Latin civil rights group, in Las Vegas. Biden had been slated to speak at the group’s convention on Wednesday afternoon as part of an effort to rally Hispanic voters ahead of the November election.

Janet Murguia, the CEO of Unidos, told guests that the president had sent his regrets and could not appear because he tested positive for the virus.

“He said to tell my folks that we’re not going to get rid of him that quickly, we’re going to have a chance to hear from him in the future directly,” she said.

There were groans in the conference room at the news.

The president’s diagnosis comes amid intense scrutiny of his health and stamina after a disastrous debate with former President Donald Trump that sparked a flurry of concern among Democrats that Biden is not up to the rigours of winning another presidential term.

The president had previously been at the Original Lindo Michoacan restaurant in Las Vegas, where he was greeting diners and sat for an interview with Univision.

Biden has been vaccinated and is current on his recommended annual booster dose for COVID-19. The vaccines have proven highly effective at limiting serious illness and death from the virus, which killed more than 1 million people in the US since the pandemic began in 2020.

Paxlovid has been proven to curtail the chances of serious illness and death from COVID-19 when prescribed in the early days of an infection, but has also been associated with rebound infections, where the virus comes back a few days after clearing up.

Biden last tested positive for COVID-19 twice in the summer of 2022, when he had a primary case and a rebound case of the virus.

Health officials have reported recent upticks in emergency room visits and hospitalisations from COVID-19. There has also been a pronounced increase in positive test results in much of the country – particularly the southwestern US.