Jill Biden tested positive for Covid on Monday night, the White House said, the second time the first lady has tested positive for the virus.
“She is currently experiencing only mild symptoms. She will remain at their home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware,” the first lady’s communications director, Elizabeth Alexander, said in a statement.
Joe Biden, scheduled to leave on Thursday for a G20 meeting in India, tested negative for Covid on Monday evening. But the president “will test at a regular cadence this week and monitor for symptoms”, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said in a statement. The first lady’s positive result came after the Bidens spent Labor Day weekend together.
Jill Biden previously tested positive for Covid in August last year. Joe Biden tested positive the previous month.
There has been a late-summer uptick in Covid cases across the United States. Experts are closely watching two new variants, EG.5, now the dominant strain, and BA.2.86, which has attracted attention from scientists because of its high number of mutations. Experts have said that the United States is not facing a threat like it did in 2020 and 2021. “We’re in a different place,” Mandy Cohen, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told NBC News last month. “I think we’re the most prepared that we’ve ever been.”
New Covid vaccines and booster shots are expected to be available this fall.