Trump’s early discharge from Walter Reed hospital has some doctors worried. Here’s why

President Donald Trump announced on Twitter he will be ending his hospital stay and return to the White House on Monday, saying he feels better than he did “20 years ago” after receiving experimental COVID-19 treatments.

“Feeling really good!” Trump wrote on Twitter, announcing he would depart Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, at 6:30 p.m. “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.”

Trump’s physician, Dr. Sean Conley, later confirmed the news during a Monday press briefing.

However, some doctors not involved in his care aren’t convinced the president should be leaving a hospital setting just yet because of how early he is into his illness.

“I have a hard time believing #Trumps doctors agree with his discharge. He feels better because the #Dexamethasone is kicking in,” Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious disease physician and vice chair of the Global Health Committee at the Infectious Diseases Society of America, wrote on Twitter.

“Anyone who has seen #COVID19 patients knows they get better but around day 5-7 they can rapidly deteriorate. #Trump has not reached that mark yet,” Kuppalli added.

Conley said during a press briefing Monday that “[the president] met or exceeded all standard hospital discharge criteria….Though he may not entirely be out of the woods yet, the team and I agree that all of our evaluations, and most importantly his clinical status, support the president’s safe return home where he’ll be surrounded by world class clinical care 24/7.”

Trump released from Walter Reed Medical Center. ‘Don’t be afraid of Covid,’ he tweets

Trump was treated with the steroid drug dexamethasone Saturday, which experts say suggests his infection has progressed in the wrong direction.

“Generally, once a patient is on oxygen, they stay in the hospital for four or five days, if everything goes well,” Dr. J. Randall Curtis, a professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, told USA Today.

“If a patient is off oxygen and then goes back on oxygen, that would suggest they’ve gotten a little bit worse. If they’ve started on dexamethasone, that suggests to me he’s gotten a little bit worse,” Curtis said. “If he’s requiring oxygen, then he has COVID pneumonia.”

Another professor told the outlet that the president is being discharged too early.

“I will say that I’ve never started someone with COVID-19 on steroids and then thought I’d be discharging the patient home the next day,” Russell Buhr, a professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of California-Los Angeles, told USA Today.

Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and visiting professor of health policy and management at the George Washington University School of Public Health, also said the decision to return Trump to the White House is a “wrong” one.

“There is so much wrong with this. Do we know that [Trump] is clinically stable & won’t endanger his own health if he leaves? Will he abide by isolation guidelines & not further endanger others? We SHOULD be afraid of #covid19. It has killed 209,000 Americans,” Wen said on Twitter.

Neurosurgeon Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, said Trump’s message to Americans to not “be afraid” was “disrespectful.”

“I worry that again he’s empowering this dangerous approach of herd immunity,” Gupta said Monday on CNN following Trump’s announcement that he’s leaving the hospital. “I think he shouldn’t be [leaving], I think he shouldn’t be advocating this approach. He has the resources that most people in this country don’t have in case he does get sick again.”

Dr. Kimi Chernoby, chief resident at Indiana University, said “COVID is something to be afraid of.”

“I have taken care of patients from across the age spectrum who have died of COVID. It is a fear that has dominated every shift I have worked since March, a fear shared by me, colleagues, staff, patients alike,” Chernoby wrote on Twitter.