NBC News:: The Nightly News - with Lester Holt

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By Dan Donahue, NBC Nightly News

Good Monday afternoon. Lester Holt will anchor a live town hall discussion with Joe Biden from Miami tonight at 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT on NBC.

The one-hour primetime event will also air across MSNBC, CNBC, NBC News NOW and will be available in Spanish on Telemundo’s digital platforms.

Here is what’s in our Nightly Rundown.

Trump tweets he will leave hospital this evening

President Trump announced on Twitter that he will leave Walter Reed Medical Center this evening at 6:30 p.m.

“Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life,” Trump wrote.

“We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!” he added.

Dr. Sean Conley, the White House physician, said Trump has “met or exceeded all standard hospital discharge criteria,” and that the president has been fever-free for 72 hours.

Conley said that Trump “may not entirely be out of the woods yet” but his clinical status supports the decision to discharge him.

If Trump is released this evening as planned, it would come before the seven- to-10 day period into the infection “when we get really worried about the lungs,” according to NBC News Senior Medical Correspondent Dr. John Torres.

Trump announces he will be leaving Walter Reed hospital

White House press secretary, two deputies tests positive for coronavirus

Even as President Trump appears to be eager to return to the White House, the Covid-19 outbreak among his staff is growing.

Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, has tested positive, along with Chad Gilmartin, the principal assistant press secretary, and Karoline Leavitt, an assistant press secretary.

McEnany announced her results on Twitter. “I tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday morning while experiencing no symptoms,” she said in a statement.

The positive result comes hours after McEnany briefed reporters outside the White House on Sunday, without wearing a mask.

McEnany maintained in her statement that “no reporters, producers, or members of the press are listed as close contacts by the White House Medical Unit.”

Prior to this morning’s positive test, McEnany said she had consistently tested negative every day since Thursday.

McEnany also said she “definitively had no knowledge” that Hope Hicks, another top Trump aide, had tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday before McEnany held a briefing inside the White House with reporters.

McEnany says she will now “begin the quarantine process.”

At least 14 people connected to the White House or Trump campaign have now tested positive:

President Donald Trump First Lady Melania Trump Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany Principal Assistant Press Secretary Chad Gilmartin Assistant Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Adviser Hope Hicks Kellyanne Conway Chris Christie Campaign Manager Bill Stepien Nick Luna, Trump’s personal attendant RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel Sen. Mike Lee Sen. Thom Tillis Sen. Ron Johnson

Attorney General Bill Barr reversed himself on Sunday and decided to enter quarantine, something that CDC guidelines recommend he should have done days ago, after attending the White House announcement for Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on Sept. 26 with several of the individuals listed above.

Barr has tested negative four times since Friday morning, a Department of Justice spokesman said.

McEnany, when speaking to reporters on Sunday, refused to reveal the number of infected White House staffers, citing “privacy concerns.”

McEnany also would not say when Trump last tested negative for the virus, as questions and confusion swirl over the timeline.

Two deputies to White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany test positive for Covid-19

Trump’s Walter Reed drive-by raises alarm among health experts

On Sunday, Trump briefly left the hospital to wave at supporters from inside an SUV, appearing to go against CDC guidelines that recommend anyone infected with Covid-19 stay isolated from others.

At least two other people could be seen inside the president’s vehicle.

Corey Lewandowski, one of Trump’s 2016 campaign managers, said both individuals were Secret Service agents who had “volunteered,” and that he believes there was a piece of Plexiglass between the president and the agents.

Some doctors who are not involved in Trump’s medical care were horrified by the president’s ride yesterday, and accused him of putting the agents in the SUV at risk.

Dr. James Phillips, an attending physician at Walter Reed, tweeted that the “Presidential SUV is not only bulletproof, but hermetically sealed against chemical attack,” and the risk of Covid-19 transmission inside was “as high as it gets outside of medical procedures.”

“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," Phillips added.

Trump’s treatment

The president was given a steroid known as dexamethasone following “two episodes of transient drops in his oxygen saturation” — which means his oxygen levels dropped too low.

Steroids have been found to be helpful for patients with severe Covid-19, but they are not recommended for more mild cases of the virus.

“We debated the reasons for this and whether we even intervene,” Dr. Sean Conley, the White House physician, said on Sunday.

Conley added that it “was a determination of the team, based predominantly on the timeline from the initial diagnosis, that we initiate dexamethasone.”

Our medical correspondent Dr. Torres said on Sunday that prescribing the president dexamethasone was a “bit of a red flag.”

“I think they might be painting a little bit of a rosy picture for everyone,” Torres said.

Trump also remains on a course of remdesivir, an antiviral treatment that the FDA has so far only approved for emergency use.

He has additionally received a single infusion of Regeneron’s experimental antibody treatment on Friday.

Visit our NBC News live blog for the latest on the president’s health.

Biden campaigns in Florida after multiple negative tests

Joe Biden is campaigning this afternoon in South Florida ahead of tonight’s NBC News live town hall discussion in Miami.

The former vice president has tested negative multiple times since Trump’s infection became public knowledge, most recently on Sunday night, his campaign said.

Biden and Trump shared a stage less than a week ago at the first presidential debate in Cleveland, though they did not have physical contact and were socially distanced.

With just 29 days to go until the Nov. 3 election, Biden’s national lead over Trump has expanded to 14 points in our latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

That poll was conducted after the contentious debate, but before Trump’s positive test was announced.

CDC acknowledges coronavirus can spread from airborne transmission

The CDC updated its guidance today to acknowledge a fact that outside health experts have warned about for months — that the coronavirus can spread through the air, further than six feet.

“Some infections can be spread by exposure to virus in small droplets and particles that can linger in the air for minutes to hours,” the new guidance states.

“These viruses may be able to infect people who are further than 6 feet away from the person who is infected or after that person has left the space.”

“This kind of spread is referred to as airborne transmission and is an important way that infections like tuberculosis, measles, and chicken pox are spread.”

The CDC says there is evidence of people with Covid-19 seemingly infecting others who were more than six feet away “within enclosed spaces that had inadequate ventilation.”

In some cases, the infected person was breathing heavily “for example while singing or exercising.”

The CDC adds that it is still much more common for the coronavirus to spread through close contact with an infected person than through airborne transmission.

Last month, the CDC published guidance on its website that said the coronavirus can spread through aerosolized droplets — only to remove it, saying it was a draft version that was posted “in error.”

What else we’re watching:

New York City is partially rolling back its reopening, with schools in nine hot spots ordered to close and switch to remote learning.
Tropical Storm Delta is now the 25th named storm of the year, and could make landfall on the northern Gulf Coast by Friday.
Former Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden announced today he has tested positive for Covid-19.
Two Americans are among the researchers who’ve won the Nobel Prize in medicine for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus.

Watch us this evening at 6:30 p.m. ET / 5:30 p.m. CT on NBC, or check your local NBC station listing. After the broadcast, access Nightly News video on NBCNightlyNews.com or the NBC News app.

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