WASHINGTON — President Biden returned to the Oval Office with a triumphant flair on Wednesday after testing negative for Covid-19, boasting that his mild case was evidence of the progress his administration had made in stemming the pandemic.
The president’s staff staged a pep rally of sorts in the Rose Garden to celebrate the end of his five-day isolation, welcoming Mr. Biden to the lectern with a rendition of “Hail to the Chief” and a crowd of cheering aides. Wearing his signature aviator sunglasses, the president removed his mask and declared his personal victory against the coronavirus.
“Fortunately, God thankfully, God willing, my symptoms were mild, my recovery was quick and I’m feeling great,” Mr. Biden said in late-morning remarks streamed and broadcast live. “The entire time I was in isolation, I was able to work, to carry out the duties of the office without any interruption. It’s a real statement on where we are in the fight against Covid-19.”
Mr. Biden, who at 79 is the oldest president in American history, appeared energetic and upbeat. He did cough at one point during his brief remarks, as he often did before he had Covid, and stumbled over the name of the drug he had taken, as he sometimes does with certain words. His return to work in person came far easier and less dramatically than when President Donald J. Trump contracted the virus in the fall of 2020, before vaccines were available, a contrast Mr. Biden himself raised.
“When my predecessor got Covid, he had to get helicoptered to Walter Reed Medical Center,” Mr. Biden said. “He was severely ill. Thankfully, he recovered. When I got Covid, I worked from upstairs in the White House, in the offices upstairs, for the five-day period. The difference is vaccinations, of course, but also three new tools free to all and widely available. You don’t need to be president to get these tools to use for your defense.”
Mr. Biden named those tools as the widespread availability of booster shots, at-home tests and treatments such as the Paxlovid antiviral drug that he took. He also used the opportunity to urge Americans to go to Covid.gov to learn more about those tools.
“Covid was killing thousands of Americans a day when I got here,” Mr. Biden said. “That isn’t the case here. You can live without fear by doing what I did. Get boosted, get tested, get treated.”
The president’s recovery comes as the new, more contagious BA.5 subvariant rapidly spreads through some communities, even infecting people who recently had Covid and had previously been thought to have increased immunity, at least temporarily. But while cases are on the rise, deaths have remained fewer than they had been, creeping up to more than 400 a day from around 300 a day. The average was more than 3,000 a day when Mr. Biden was inaugurated.
Mr. Biden’s return to the office came shortly after Dr. Kevin C. O’Connor, the White House physician, reported that he had tested negative on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. The president’s symptoms from Covid-19 were “almost completely resolved,” Dr. O’Connor wrote in a memo, but Mr. Biden will continue to wear a tightfitting mask for the next 10 days when he is around other people.
“He remains fever-free and he discontinued use of any acetaminophen (Tylenol) for the past 36 hours,” Dr. O’Connor said.
At the start of his presidency, Mr. Biden took extraordinary precautions to avoid contracting Covid-19, spending much of the first few months sequestered from many of his staff members. He did not travel and conducted most of his business via video calls.
But the White House dropped many of those precautions as vaccines became widely available. In recent months, the president resumed a full travel schedule, stopped wearing a mask in most cases and held crowded, in-person events.
Dr. O’Connor said in his letter that the president was at some risk of what doctors call a “Paxlovid rebound,” in which some patients experience a return of symptoms after testing negative. He said that, as a result, the president would be tested more frequently than usual.
