US President Donald Trump, who on October 2 said that he had tested positive for coronavirus, tested negative for COVID-19 using a rapid test, White House physician Sean Conley said on Monday.
In a memo released to the public, Conley said, “I can share with you that he tested negative, on consecutive days, using the Abbot BinaxNOW antigen card.”
Not specifying the date of the test, Conley said he data allowed the medical team to conclude “that the president is not infectious to others.”
This brief statement was issued while the president was on board Air Force One en route to Florida for a campaign rally.
“Here we are!” Trump said at the opening of a rally in Sanford, Florida, on Monday, which comes as his first campaign since he contracted COVID-19.
At the rally, which came after Conley’s statement of the US President being “non-contagious”, Trump said, “I feel so powerful.”
The doctor said the negative determination had taken into account a number of measurements and not just the rapid test alone.
Antigen tests are less sensitive than the more traditional PCR diagnostic test to low levels of virus.