Dr. Sean Conley. Susan Walsh/AP Photo

President Joe Biden removed Dr. Sean Conley, Trump’s White House physician.

Dr. Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s longtime physician, will assume the role.

Conley was accused of concealing information about Trump’s condition after he got COVID-19.

Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

President Joe Biden removed Dr. Sean Conley as the head of the White House Medical Unit, The Associated Press reported on Monday.

Biden named Dr. Kevin O’Connor the chief White House physician instead.

O’Connor has been Biden’s doctor since 2009 and served while Biden was the vice president, ABC News reported.

Conley is to start a teaching post at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Maryland, the AP said.

Conley, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2018, was accused of misleading the public about Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis in October.

Conley was criticized as lacking transparency when he gave updates about Trump’s condition, declining to say whether Trump had been given oxygen. He was also accused of exaggerating the president’s health at the time.

Earlier in the year, Conley treated Trump with hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug that experts say is not effective for treating COVID-19 and can even have dangerous side effects.

The Food and Drug Administration in June rescinded its emergency use authorization for the drug for COVID-19 patients.

“When President Trump took the initial course of hydroxychloroquine, there was ample evidence already – and now there’s even more – that there was no benefits. In fact, there was a lot of potential harm in cardiac arrhythmias or other adverse effects,” Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of California San Francisco, previously told Insider.

Read more: Mike and Karen Pence are homeless and appear to be couch-surfing their way through Indiana

Two sources told NBC News in May that many people in the White House Medical Unit thought Conley had been promoted without the proper vetting.

Story continues

The White House. Andrea Izzotti/Shutterstock

The top White House physician is often drawn from the military; O’Connor is a retired Army colonel.

O’Connor was called to action late last year when Biden tripped, fell, and fractured his foot while playing with one of his dogs at his home in Delaware.

Trump had often attacked Biden as senile. The Biden campaign released an assessment from O’Connor in December 2019 that described Biden as “fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency, to include those as chief executive, head of state and commander in chief.”

Read the original article on Business Insider



Source link