BREAKING Covid-19: Donald Trump receiving powerful lung drug, doctors disclose, indicating more serious symptoms

President Donald Trump, who is in hospital with Covid-19, received supplemental oxygen on Sunday and is now being treated with a powerful steroid amid indications that his lungs may have suffered some damage, the White House physician said.

At a briefing in front of Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre outside Washington, doctors treating Trump continued to be upbeat about his condition. One of his physicians said the president could be discharged as soon as Tuesday, but another conceded they had not been fully forthcoming in their initial medical briefing.

Trump's hospitalisation, the most serious known medical episode involving the country's chief executive since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981, has roiled the presidential race a month before the November 3 election. It also represents a setback to the Trump campaign strategy of turning attention away from the pandemic that has killed nearly 210,000 Americans.

At Sunday's briefing, the White House physician, Dr Sean Conley, provided several significant new pieces of information about the 74-year-old president, saying that he had experienced a "high fever" Friday and had received supplemental oxygen for about an hour before being transported to the military hospital in suburban Bethesda, Maryland, later that day.

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