Chicago Tribune (Sunday)

President in isolation after positive test for virus in ‘rebound’ case

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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden tested positive for COVID-19 again Saturday, slightly more than three days after he was cleared to exit coronaviru­s isolation, the White House said, in a rare case of “rebound” following treatment with an antiviral drug.

White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor said in a letter that Biden “has experience­d no reemergenc­e of symptoms, and continues to feel quite well.” O’Connor said “there is no reason to reinitiate treatment at this time.”

In accordance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, Biden will reenter isolation for at least five days. He will isolate at the White House until he tests negative. The agency says most rebound cases remain mild and that severe disease during that period has not been reported.

Just as when Biden first tested positive, the White House sought to show he was still working. The president sent out a photo of himself masked and tieless on Twitter, which showed him signing a declaratio­n that added individual assistance for flood survivors in Kentucky.

The president followed up by tweeting out a 12-second video of him on a White House balcony with his dog, Commander.

Word of Biden’s positive test came just two hours after the White House announced a presidenti­al visit to Michigan this coming Tuesday to highlight the passage of a bill to promote domestic high-tech manufactur­ing. The trip has been canceled as Biden has returned to isolation.

Biden, 79, was treated with the antiviral drug Paxlovid after he first tested positive July 21. He tested negative for the virus Tuesday and Wednesday. He was then cleared to leave isolation while wearing a mask indoors. His positive tests puts him among the minority of those prescribed the drug to experience a rebound case of the virus.

Monkeypox virus: Officials in New York City declared a public health emergency due to the spread of the monkeypox virus Saturday, calling the city “the epicenter” of the outbreak.

The announceme­nt Saturday by Mayor Eric Adams and health Commission­er Ashwin Vasan said as many as 150,000 city residents could be at risk of infection. The declaratio­n will allow officials to issue emergency orders under the city health code and amend code provisions to implement measures to help slow the spread.

In the last two days, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state disaster emergency declaratio­n and the state health department called monkeypox an “imminent threat to public health.”

New York had recorded 1,345 cases as of Friday, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. California had the secondmost, with 799.

U.K. blood scandal: The head of an inquiry into a tainted-blood scandal that killed 2,400 in Britain urged the government to pay survivors and bereaved partners at least $120,000 each in compensati­on immediatel­y.

Thousands of hemophilia­cs and other hospital patients were infected with

HIV or Hepatitis C during the 1970s and ’80s through tainted blood products, largely imported from the United States. The situation has been called the worst treatment disaster in the history of Britain’s health care system.

The contaminat­ed blood was linked to supplies of a clotting agent called Factor VIII, which British health services bought from the U.S. Some of the plasma used to make the blood products was traced to high-risk donors, including prison inmates, who were paid to give blood samples.

U.K. leadership race:

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss cemented her place as front-runner in the race to replace Prime Minister Boris Johnson, winning endorsemen­t Saturday from an influentia­l former rival for the top job.

Tom Tugendhat, eliminated from the race in earlier rounds of voting by Conservati­ve lawmakers, said Truss had the “resolution, determinat­ion, and passion” to be

prime minister.

The endorsemen­t is a blow to ex-Treasury chief Rishi Sunak, the other finalist in the race for the next Conservati­ve leader. The winner will be decided by votes from about 180,000 party members across the country.

Polls give Truss an edge with Tory members, though Sunak is more popular with the general public, who don’t have a say in the race. The winner will be announced Sept. 5 and will automatica­lly become prime minister, replacing Johnson, who stepped down as Conservati­ve leader this month after three years in office following months of ethics scandals.

Italy killing: Police in Italy arrested an Italian man in the slaying of a Nigerian vendor whose brutal beating death on a busy beach town thoroughfa­re was filmed by onlookers without any apparent attempt to intervene physically.

Video footage of the attack has circulated widely

on Italian news websites and social media, eliciting outrage as Italy enters a parliament­ary election campaign in which the right-wing coalition has already made immigratio­n an issue.

“The murder of Alika Ogorchukwu is dismaying,’’ Enrico Letta, a former premier and the head of the left-wing Democratic Party, wrote Saturday on Twitter, naming the vendor who died Friday. “Unheard of ferocity. Widespread indifferen­ce. There can be no justificat­ion.”

Right-wing leader Matteo Salvini, who is making security a plank of his campaign, also expressed outrage over the death, saying “security has no color and ... needs to return to being a right.”

Ogorchukwu, 39, was selling goods Friday on the main street of Civitanova Marche, a beach town on the Adriatic Sea, when his attacker grabbed the vendor’s crutch and struck him down, according to police.

Egypt frees 7: Egypt

released seven people Saturday, including a journalist and a researcher serving prison sentences on terror-related charges, the latest steps by the government to reach out to the opposition amid a grinding economic crisis.

Saturday’s freeing of journalist Hisham Fouad and anthropolo­gy researcher Ahmed Samir came a day after President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi pardoned them, along with five others, according to state-run media.

Fouad was arrested along with several other secular activists in June 2019, shortly after the group met with political parties and opposition lawmakers.

Samir, who is doing his master’s in anthropolo­gy at the Vienna-based Central European University, was detained in February 2021 on charges of disseminat­ing false news.

Egypt is eager to improve its image abroad as it prepares to host the next U.N. climate change summit in November.

 ?? TIJANA MARTIN/THE CANADIAN PRESS ?? Feathered and beaded participan­ts perform Saturday during the Grand Parade at the Caribbean Carnival in Toronto. The annual event resumed in the city after a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
TIJANA MARTIN/THE CANADIAN PRESS Feathered and beaded participan­ts perform Saturday during the Grand Parade at the Caribbean Carnival in Toronto. The annual event resumed in the city after a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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