Jill Biden Tests Positive For COVID-19 After Joe Had It For Weeks

Shelby TalcottAugust 16, 2022

First Lady Jill Biden tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday and is experiencing “mild symptoms,” according to her office.

Jill Biden’s positive test coincides with the end of the family’s vacation in South Carolina. It also comes just over one week after President Joe Biden emerged after spending weeks in isolation due to two positive COVID-19 tests.

“After testing negative for COVID-19 on Monday during her regular testing cadence, the First Lady began to develop cold-like symptoms late in the evening,” her communications director Elizabeth Alexander wrote in a statement. “She tested negative again on a rapid antigen test, but a PCR test came back positive.”

Like the president, Jill Biden is being prescribed Paxlovid, according to her office. She plans to remain in South Carolina as she undergoes her period of isolation and will return once she receives two negative COVID tests.

U.S. first lady Jill Biden rides a bicycle on the beach on Kiawah Island, South Carolina, U.S., August 14, 2022. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

A White House spokesman noted that Biden tested negative for the virus on Tuesday and still plans to return to the White House, where he will sign the “Inflation Reduction Act” into law. The president’s current schedule has him departing from the White House later Tuesday and heading to Wilmington, Delaware.

“The President tested negative for COVID this morning on an antigen test. Consistent with CDC guidance because he is a close contact of the First Lady, he will mask for 10 days when indoors and in close proximity to others. We will also increase the President’s testing cadence and report those results,” the White House said in a statement.

Biden first tested positive for COVID-19 July 21. He subsequently tested positive for a second time July 30 in what his doctor called a “rebound” positivity case. These cases have been seen in patients who are prescribed Paxlovid.