Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani receiving same Covid drugs as president
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani receiving same Covid drugs as president
President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has revealed in a call to his own radio show that he is being treated for coronavirus with the same drug cocktail his boss received when he was ill with Covid-19.
He was admitted to hospital on Sunday after becoming the latest official close to Mr Trump to test positive.
Mr Giuliani, 76, told the show he expects to leave hospital on Wednesday.
He has been treated with Remdesivir and Dexamethasone, he explained.
Mr Trump tweeted on Sunday that his ally, who has been leading the Trump campaign's legal challenges to the November election outcome, had been diagnosed with the virus.
"I am doing fine. Pretty much all the symptoms are gone. The minute I took the cocktail I felt 100% better. It works very quickly, wow," he told his colleagues on his weekly show with 77 WABC radio from the Medstar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington DC.
Mr Trump has strongly praised the experimental combination of drugs he received when he spent three nights in hospital with Covid-19 in October.
Dozens of people in Mr Trump's orbit are said to have tested positive for Covid-19 since October.
Mr Giuliani said the president's doctor had urged him to go to hospital where he could "get it [Covid-19] over with in three days".
Mr Giuliani's son Andrew tweeted that his dad had "improved significantly" adding "I can't seem to get him off the phone for the last day".
Referring to his prior diagnosis of prostate cancer, Rudy Giuliani suggested "You don't screw around your whole life because of an illness. I'd rather face risks than live in a basement my whole life."
During the election campaign earlier this year, Mr Trump's campaign attacked his rival Joe Biden for "hiding in his basement" during the pandemic.
Trump's Covid treatment:
- Dexamethasone is a tried-and-tested steroid that saves lives by calming the immune system, but it needs to be used at the right time. It is not a drug normally given in a "mild" stage of coronavirus
- Remdesivir is a more experimental drug. First developed as treatment for Ebola, it works by confusing the virus as it looks chemically similar to some of the raw materials the virus needs to replicate. There is no evidence that lives have been saved with this drug
- Mr Trump also took monoclonal antibody therapy made by the company Regeneron. The antibodies physically stick to the coronavirus so they can't get inside the body's cells
- In 2017 the president owned shares in Gilead, which makes Remdesevir, and Regeneron - but neither company appears on his most recent financial disclosure
Mr Giuliani, a former mayor of New York City, had been on a cross-country tour in an effort to convince state governments to overturn the results of the November election vote when he contracted the disease.
He had criticised face masks and was frequently pictured at indoor events without a face covering.
Last Wednesday, President Trump's lawyer appeared at a hearing on alleged election fraud in Michigan where he asked a witness beside him if she would be comfortable removing her face mask.
"I don't want you to do this if you feel uncomfortable, but would you be comfortable taking your mask off, so we can hear you more clearly?" said Mr Giuliani, who was not wearing a face mask. The witness chose to keep her mask on after asking the panel if she could be heard.
The US has recorded more than 15 million cases so far and 285,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University research, which are both global highs. Many parts of the country are seeing peak infections, with record numbers of people in hospital.
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Correction: an earlier version of this story wrongly stated that Regeneron made Remdesevir, a drug developed by Gilead.
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