Many social media users are pointing to the time - almost exactly four years ago - that Trump mocked Hillary Clinton for having pneumonia.

"She can't make it 15 feet to her car? Give me a break," he said in October 2016.

Just over a month later he won the presidential election.

German media seemed somewhat unsurprised. "Trump usually does not wear a mask in public", wrote the centre-right Die Welt, while the centrist Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung pointed out that the pandemic did not deter him from making numerous major election campaign appearances.

Media in France echoed the sentiment that Mr Trump undermined his own health by underestimating the virus. "After months of catastrophic handling of the pandemic in the USA, after months of lies and contradictory messages to his supporters… Donald Trump has tested positive for Covid-19," wrote Libération.

Yes Annie, I suppose we will hear many different reports at this stage. His age and weight are against him from the start.

In a memo shared by White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, White House physician Navy Cmdr. Dr. Sean Conley wrote
:
I release the following information with the permission of President Donald J. Trump.

This afternoon, in consultation with specialists from Walter Reed and Johns Hopkins University, I recommended movement of the President up to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for further monitoring. This evening I am happy to report that the President is doing very well. He is not requiring any supplemental oxygen, but in consultation with specialists we have elected to initiate Remdesivir* therapy. He has completed his first dose and is resting comfortably.

Trump is the lucky recipient of the benefit of the UKs RECOVERY trial having been given Remdesivir and antibodies.

A range of potential treatments have been suggested for COVID-19 but nobody knows if any of them will turn out to be more effective in helping people recover than the usual standard of hospital care which all patients will receive. The RECOVERY Trial is currently testing some of these suggested treatments:

• Low-dose Dexamethasone (now only recruiting children)
• Azithromycin (a commonly used antibiotic)
• Tocilizumab (an anti-inflammatory treatment given by injection)
• Convalescent plasma (collected from donors who have recovered from COVID-19 and contains antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus)
• REGN-COV2 (a combination of monoclonal antibodies directed against coronavirus).

REGN-COV2 is the first specifically designed COVID-19 therapy being evaluated by RECOVERY. It was selected in part based on its emerging safety profile in humans, pre-clinical data showing it could protect against viral escape mutations, and prevention and treatment studies in non-human primates showing it reduced the amount of virus and associated damage in the lungs. REGN-COV2 is currently being studied in two Phase 2/3 clinical trials for the treatment of COVID-19 and in a Phase 3 trial for the prevention of COVID-19 in household contacts of infected individuals.

A crowded Rose Garden ceremony last Saturday at which Donald Trump announced Amy Coney Barrett as his supreme court nominee has come under scrutiny after at least seven figures in attendance tested positive for coronavirus, including the president himself.

On Friday, the president’s former counsellor, Kellyanne Conway, announced she had tested positive and had “mild” symptoms. Two Republican senators, Thom Tillis and Mike Lee, also announced they have also tested positive. University of Notre Dame’s president, John Jenkins, was also later diagnosed with the disease.

Speculation is growing that the event, which took place on 25 September, could have been the source of Trump’s infection and possibly a super-spreader event, as confirmed cases rise. Barrett said Friday that she had not tested positive for the virus.

A visual guide produced by Politico demonstrated the growing number of Trump officials and allies who have tested positive for coronavirus since attending the ceremony. Many of those who have since announced they tested positive for the virus were seated close together.

One would imagine the purpose of the White House medical team’s Saturday morning press conference was to reassure the public that the president is doing well and that the nation’s top medical experts are on top of the situation.

Instead, they created more confusion.

Sean Conley, the president’s physician, said Trump was diagnosed “72 hours ago” – which would be Wednesday morning. That’s before the president travelled to Minnesota for a campaign rally that night, before he flew to New Jersey for a fund-raiser on Thursday and more than 36 hours before the president revealed his coronavirus diagnosis to the world in a late-night tweet.

The timeline is further muddied by the revelation that the president was given an antiviral treatment sometime on Thursday – also before his announcement.

Conley tried to paint a positive picture of the president’s current medical condition, although he was evasive about whether Trump had ever been given oxygen to assist his breathing.

The White House and the president’s medical team have some explaining to do. They have since said the physicians misspoke, but that is unlikely to put concerns to rest that the president may have knowingly put more people at risk by travelling when he knew he might have Covid-19.

Several US media are now reporting that President Trump was given oxygen at the White House before he left for hospital.

The New York Times quotes two people as saying that Trump had trouble breathing on Friday and "his oxygen level dropped", leading doctors to give him supplemental oxygen.

AP news agency is also reporting that he was given oxygen at the White House, quoting a source.

At a briefing on Trump's condition earlier, his physician Dr Sean Conley said he wasn't on oxygen at the moment. But his doctors refused repeatedly to rule out that he had ever been on supplementary oxygen.