The New York Times reports that United States President Donald Trumps doctors have admitted that his blood oxygen level dipped twice in the two days after he had been diagnosed with a coronavirus infection, leading to speculation that his condition might be more serious than initially thought. Reports read that he had to be put on steroids, which cannot be taken in the case of people with mild symptoms.

The NYT reports that, resolute to reassert himself on the political stage on his third day in the hospital, Mr. Trump made an unannounced exit from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center early Sunday evening. He was driven past supporters holding Trump flags gathered outside the building. A masked Trump waved at the crowd through a closed window of the vehicle before returning to the hospital.

Some medical experts criticized Trump’s little jaunt out of the hospital as unnecessarily putting both hospital staff and Secret Service agents at risk for a stunt. Dr. James P. Phillips, an attending physician at Walter Reed, tweeted: “Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days. They might get sick. They may die. For political theater. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater. This is insanity.” He also noted that it would not be an option open to any other patient. He tweeted: “When I first saw this, I thought, maybe he was being transported to another hospital.”

The criticism has consolidated perceptions that Trump had mishandled the pandemic on the whole. According to the New York Times, Trump had had a positive result on Thursday evening after returning from a fund-raiser at his golf club, but did not reveal it when he was then called for a Fox News show. He said he was still awaiting results.

Umm Muhammed Umar