Chinese President Xi Jinping has expressed his hopes that his US counterpart Joe Biden makes a quick recovery from Covid-19.
In a written message to Biden on Friday, Xi said he wished to express his sincere best wishes.
“I wish you a speedy recovery,” Xi said, according to state-run Xinhua News Agency.
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The White House said on Thursday that Biden had tested positive for Covid-19 and was experiencing “very mild symptoms”.
Biden began isolating at the White House and would “continue to carry out all of his duties fully during that time”, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
Biden has also begun taking Paxlovid, an antiviral drug developed by Pfizer, Jean-Pierre said.
In a tweet on Thursday, Biden said he was “doing great”.
“I’m doing well, getting a lot of work done … Keep the faith, it’s going to be OK.”
White House Covid-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha told reporters that Biden’s oxygen levels were being monitored “very regularly” and appeared “normal” on Thursday morning.
Earlier, Biden said he and Xi would talk within the next week and a half.
But the Chinese Foreign Ministry declined to say when the talk would happen, saying only that the two leaders maintain various forms of communication.
The talks, arranged after a meeting between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier this month, would aim to calm down increasing tensions between China and the US.
But reports that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is planning a trip to Taiwan next month risks upending that goal.
If Pelosi’s trip goes ahead, she would be the most senior US official to visit Taiwan since her predecessor Newt Gingrich in the 1990s.
Beijing is expected to react strongly, including a display of military strength, if she visits the island, which it regards as a breakaway province.
Pelosi raised the possibility of a military escalation from China on Thursday after Biden said the Pentagon did not support the visit. She said: “Maybe the military was afraid our plane would get shot down or something like that by the Chinese.”
Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump was infected with Covid-19 in October 2020. Xi also sent his best wishes to Trump and his wife Melania, who was also infected, at that time.
Trump, then 74, was hospitalised and underwent aggressive treatment at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre in a suburb of Washington. His low oxygen levels alarmed his medical team.
Dr Jeremy Faust, an emergency medicine specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, wrote on Twitter: “Biden isn’t remotely in the same risk category as Trump was. He’s had four doses of vaccine, Paxlovid, and possibly a variant which tends to cause less severe disease. He also doesn’t have obesity.”
Additional reporting by Reuters and Agence France Presse
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2022 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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