President’s age, health woes raise his risks for illness

U.S. President Donald Trump has several strikes against him — age, obesity, elevated cholesterol and being male — that could put him at greater risk of becoming seriously ill from the coronavirus infection he disclosed early Friday.

Trump was fatigued and will spend a “few days” at a military hospital, White House officials said later in the day.

“The odds are far and away that he’ll have a mild illness” as most people with the virus do, said Dr. Gregory Poland, an infectious disease specialist at the Mayo Clinic who has no role in Trump’s care.

But COVID-19 is very unpredictable, he stressed.

“We have young people who die. We have nursing home patients, a lot of them, who actually do quite well,” Poland said.

No treatments have proven effective for preventing illness in someone with no or mild symptoms, but Trump’s physician, Dr. Sean Conley, said the president was given an experimental drug aimed at supplying antibodies to help fight the infection.

Here’s what experts say about Trump’s outlook and next steps:

Infection causes mild or no symptoms in about 80% of cases. About 15% of people become seriously ill and 5% get critically ill.

Symptoms, when they do occur, usually appear two to 14 days after infection and can include loss of smell or taste, coughing, a sore throat, trouble breathing, fatigue, muscle or body aches, headache, nausea or vomiting, diarrhea and fever.

Up to half of patients who are hospitalized don’t have a fever when admitted but nearly all develop one. How people fare varies widely — some seem to be recovering and then suddenly worsen.

Pneumonia, often with a specific appearance on X-rays, sometimes develops but complications in virtually every organ of the body have been reported.

Doctors also increasingly recognize that some people have long-lasting symptoms.

Doctors likely will check Trump often for any difficulty breathing, coughing or other symptoms.

No drugs are known to help for people with no or very mild symptoms. Remdesivir and steroids have shown benefit for certain moderately and severely ill patients.

Trump was given an experimental antibody drug that’s currently in late-stage studies from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Antibodies are proteins the body makes when an infection occurs. They attach to a virus and help it be eliminated. The Regeneron drug is made with purified versions of two such antibodies.

A myriad of other people who have been around Trump in the previous 48 hours are at risk, doctors said.