By Arul Louis

New York, Oct 6 (IANS): US President Donald Trump has said that he will be leaving the hospital on Monday evening and his doctors confirmed that he is ready for discharge.

"I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 p.m.," he tweeted Monday afternoon.

His personal doctor Sean Conley told reporters, "He's met or exceeded all standard hospital discharge criteria."

Trump was admitted to the military hospital in Washington on Friday for treatment of COVID-19.

Trump's return to the White House comes as several people close to him have come down with the coronavirus. His press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was the latest to announce that she had tested positive for the virus.

It is estimated that almost 20 White House staffers are ill with COVID-19, two of them from McEnany's office.

In his tweet, Trump said, "Feeling really good! Don't be afraid of COVID. Don't let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!"

However, his doctors were more cautious.

Conley said, "Though he may not entirely be out of the woods yet, the team and I agree that all our evaluations, and more importantly, his clinical status, support the president's safe return home, where he'll be surrounded by world-class medical care, 24/7."

While he's back at the White House, "We'll remain cautiously optimistic and on guard, because we're in a bit of uncharted territory when it comes to a patient that received the therapies he has so early," he said.

With a seven-day window for a COVID-19 patient's situation worsening, Conley said the doctors were looking to this weekend.

"If we can get through to Monday with him remaining the same or better yet, then we will all take that final deep sigh of relief," he said.

The doctors said that he will receive the last of the five doses of Remdesivir at the White House on Tuesday and will continue with the steroid drug dexamethasone.

"We try to get patients home out of the hospital as quickly as a safe and reasonable everyday a patient stays in the hospital unnecessarily is a risk to themselves," Conley said.

Conley said that Trump continued working and the White House released four orders he had signed.

One was about providing mental health assistance during the pandemic and the others were orders permitting companies to continue operating a petroleum pipeline from Canada to the US.

Concern around Trump's health condition persisted because Conley said that he had two temporary episodes of low oxygen for which they had given it to him.

Moreover, the experimental medicines Remdesivir and dexamethasone are given to patients in serious conditions, although his doctors say his situation was not that dire.

Citing patient privacy rules, they refused to speak about the specifics of his lung condition.