The United States President, Donald Trump has said that his recent positive diagnosis of Covid-19 was a “blessing in disguise.” Trump was last week diagnosed with the virus and was for a few days admitted in hospital, before he was discharged earlier this week. Standing outside the White House with the Oval Office windows in the background, the president praised the treatment he received with the experimental Regeneron antibody cocktail “and various other drugs” during his 72-hour hospitalization. “They call them therapeutic. But to me it wasn’t therapeutic. It just made me better. OK? I call that a cure,” declared Trump in the nearly 5-minute, ad-libbed video. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Wednesday evening told reporters the video was “taken on the South Lawn earlier this afternoon.” Trump promised the cutting-edge antibody drug would be made available for free for all coronavirus patients in the United States. “I want everybody to be given the same treatment as your president,” Trump said. Regeneron confirmed that the president was provided with its REGN-COV2 antibody cocktail as part of a “compassionate use request,” which is when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration allows for unapproved treatments to be made available to treat ill patients when no other treatment is available. Regeneron has an arrangement with the Defense Department to distribute the first 300,000 doses once it they are available. The monoclonal antibodies are difficult and expensive to manufacture, and it is not known when they will be widely available to treat hospitalized Covid-19 patients. In the video, Trump said “I feel like, perfect” then saying of his becoming infected with COVID-19: “I think this was a blessing from God that I caught it.” The coronavirus has killed 211,000 people in the United States and infected more than 7.5 million across the country, according to Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center data. “China’s going to pay a big price” for infecting the United States and the world, vowed Trump in the video, in reference to the coronavirus emanating from Wuhan. Trump returned to the Oval Office Wednesday afternoon for the first time since he was released two days earlier from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. He walked from the residence to his official office for briefings on the stalled coronavirus relief stimulus talks and Hurricane Delta, according to White House officials. Trump tweeted shortly after the confirmation that he was briefed on the storm and had spoken about preparations with the governors of Texas and Louisiana.
