Ask an infectious disease doctor whether the president still has coronavirus, and you quickly realize that “having” the virus is a concept that exists more among laypeople than doctors.
“We try to avoid that question,” says Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center of Health Security. “It becomes much harder to explain to people, well why is the test positive when you’re saying he’s not contagious? It’s because, that far out, it’s not viable virus.”
Dr. Sean Conley, the physician to the president, said Saturday that the president was “no longer a transmission risk to others,” and that there was “no longer evidence of actively replicating virus.” But in reporting on the letter, several media outlets noted that Conley didn’t say the president had tested negative for COVID-19, raising concern among some experts.
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