Joe Biden tests positive for Covid: Inside the 79-year-old president’s health history

After two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine and two booster shots, President Joe Biden’s physician says his Covid-19 symptoms so far are “mild” and consist mostly of a runny nose and “fatigue with an occasional dry cough”.

While Covid-19 remains a potentially deadly virus, particularly to those who have eschewed vaccines and booster shots, Mr Biden’s case so far remains far less serious than it would have been before the advent and wide availability of vaccines against Covid-19.

Mr Biden, the oldest person to be sworn in for a first term as president, is by most accounts in extremely good health for someone his age. He regularly exercises, is considered to have a healthy Body Mass Index, and was described by his doctor as a “healthy, vigorous” male who is “fit to execute the duties of the presidency” in a 2019 statement.

Physician to the President Dr Kevin O’Connor said in a statement issued last year that Mr Biden remains healthy and vigorous, with some stiffness in his gait attributed to spinal arthritis.

And before Thursday’s Covid-19 diagnosis, the most serious health problem Mr Biden has faced since winning the 2020 election has been a broken foot, endured while playing with one of his German Shepherd dogs. But the president’s health has not always been as robust.

Twice in the 1980s, Mr Biden had near-death experiences which required him to undergo brain surgery two times within five months.

He described them in a speech he delivered last week in a Jerusalem hospital.

President Joe Biden goes on a bike ride in Gordons Pond State Park in Rehoboth Beach, Del., Sunday, July 10, 2022. (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

“I was making a speech and I had a terrible headache — this was years ago — and I did a very stupid thing: I got on an aircraft and I flew home. It turned out I had two cranial aneurysms, and I got rushed to a hospital in the middle of a snowstorm for a nine-and-a-half-hour operation that saved my life,” he recalled, describing the February 1988 trip to Walter Reed Army Medical Centre, then in Northwest Washington DC.

Mr Biden’s plane ride came after he’d passed out in a hotel following a speech at the University of Rochester.

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In his 2007 memoir, Promises to Keep, Mr Biden wrote that he recalled having “lightning flashing inside my head, a powerful electrical surge — and then a rip of pain like I’d never felt before”.

At Walter Reed, he was told he needed surgery, with only a 50-50 change he’d live through the procedure.

“Maybe I should have been frightened at this point, but I felt calm,” he wrote. “In fact, I felt becalmed, like I was floating gently in the wide-open sea. It surprised me, but I had no real fear of dying. I’d long since accepted the fact that life’s guarantees don’t include a fair shake.”

But he did survive, and three months later he underwent a similar procedure to fix another, smaller aneurysm on the opposite side from the first.

According to The Daily Beast, Mr Biden made a last-minute request of the surgeon, Dr Neal Kassell, as he was being wheeled in for the procedure.

“He looked me in the eye and said: ‘Doc, do a good job, because someday I’m going to be president,’” Dr Kassell said in November 2020, just days after Mr Biden’s prediction finally became reality.