President Joe Biden says Bill Clinton is ‘doing fine’ and will be discharged shortly

President Joe Biden on Friday said he had spoken to Bill Clinton, who was admitted to a California hospital on Tuesday for an infection, and the former US president is “doing fine” and will be released from the hospital “shortly.”

“We’re all thinking about President Clinton today,” Biden said, according to AP inputs. “He’s always been the comeback kid.” Clinton was hospitalised on Tuesday evening for what spokesman Angel Ureña only described as a non-COVID-19-related infection. “All health indicators are trending in the right direction, including his white blood count which has decreased significantly,” Ureña said in a statement.

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Meanwhile, Biden, during remarks at the University of Connecticut, further said the former president “sends his best.” Later, the 78-year-old told reporters that Clinton is “not in any serious condition” and is “getting out shortly.”

“He’s not in any serious condition. He is getting out shortly as I understand. Whether that’s tomorrow or the next day I don’t know,” Biden said.

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The president also said it’s been a while since he’s last seen Clinton, and that he plans to get together and “have some lunch” with him at some point in the future, POLITICO reported.

“He was very encouraging about why he thought the policies I was pursuing made sense but we didn’t get into much detail, except I was mainly just seeing how he was doing,” Biden said, describing his phone call with the former president.

The White House did not provide further details on when the call took place.

An aide to the former president said that Clinton was in an intensive care section of the hospital, though not receiving ICU care.

The aide, who spoke to reporters at the hospital on the condition his name wasn’t used, did not elaborate on the reason Clinton was in the ICU. He said Clinton had a urological infection that spread to his bloodstream, but he is on the mend and never went into septic shock, a potentially life-threatening condition.

In the years since Clinton left the White House in 2001, the former president has faced health scares. In 2004, he underwent quadruple bypass surgery after experiencing prolonged chest pains and shortness of breath. He returned to the hospital for surgery for a partially collapsed lung in 2005, and in 2010 he had a pair of stents implanted in a coronary artery, AP reported.

With inputs from the Associated Press