New details about Donald Trump’s hospitalization in October reveal that the former president was sicker with Covid-19 than publicly acknowledged at the time, with extremely depressed blood oxygen levels at one point and a lung problem associated with pneumonia caused by the coronavirus, according to four people familiar with his condition.
His prognosis became so worrisome before he was taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center that officials believed he would need to be put on a ventilator, two of the people familiar with his condition said.
It has been previously reported that Trump had trouble breathing and a fever on October 2, the day he was taken to the hospital, and the types of treatment he received indicated that his condition was serious. But the new details about his condition and about the effort inside the White House to get him special access to an unapproved drug to fight the virus help to flesh out one of the most dire episodes of Trump’s presidency.
The new revelations about Trump’s struggle with the virus also underscore the limited and sometimes misleading nature of the information disclosed at the time about his condition.
nytimes
