The news came as California Representative Adam Schiff has become the highest-profile Democrat to call for US President Joe Biden to drop his re-election bid.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced the positive test for the 81-year-old Democrat after he pulled out of a scheduled event.
āHe is vaccinated and boosted and experiencing mild symptoms,ā Jean-Pierre said.
Biden will fly to his home in Delaware, where he will āself-isolate and will continue to carry out all of his duties fully during that timeā.
The president of UnidosUS, a Latino civil rights organisation, had earlier said Biden would not be able to speak at the organisationās Wednesday afternoon conference due to the diagnosis.
Dr Kevin OāConnor, the presidentās physician, said in a note that Biden āpresented this afternoon with upper respiratory symptoms, to include rhinorrhea (runny nose) and non-productive cough, with general malaiseā.
After the positive COVID-19 test, Biden was prescribed the antiviral drug Paxlovid and has taken his first dose, OāConnor said.
Biden had been slated to speak at the UnidosUS event as part of an effort to rally Hispanic voters ahead of the November election.
The president had previously been at the Original Lindo Michoacan restaurant in Las Vegas, where he was greeting diners and was scheduled to have an interview with Univision.
It comes as the ageing President, 81, tested positive for Covid as theĀ
Schiff is the 20th congressional Democrat to publicly urge Biden to withdraw from the presidential race.
āA second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy, and I have serious concerns about whether the President can defeat Donald Trump in November,ā Schiff, a California Democrat who is running for the Senate, was quoted by the Los Angeles Times newspaper as saying.
Democratic concern about the 81-year-old incumbentās ability to beat Republican challenger Trump, or to serve another four years in office, surged after Bidenās halting June 27 debate performance.
Trump is currently in Milwaukee where his fellow Republicans are formally nominating him as candidate, days after he narrowly escaped an assassinās bullet at a Pennsylvania campaign stop.
Nearly two-thirds of Democrat voters say Biden should step aside and let his party nominate a different candidate, according to an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released on Wednesday, undercutting his post-debate claim that āaverage Democratsā are still with him even if someābig namesā are turning on him.
āWhile the choice to withdraw from the campaign is President Bidenās alone, I believe it is time for him to pass the torch,ā Schiff said in a statement.
āAnd in doing so, secure his legacy of leadership by allowing us to defeat Donald Trump in the upcoming election.ā
Schiffās announcement comes after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries encouraged the Democratic National Convention (DNC) to delay for a week plans to hold a virtual vote to renominate Biden, which could have taken place as soon as Sunday, according to two people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The DNCās rules committee will meet on Friday to discuss the virtual vote plans and will finalise them next week, according to a letter sent to members obtained on Wednesday by The Associated Press.
The letter from co-chairs Bishop Leah D Daughtry and Minnesota governor Tim Walz states that the virtual roll call vote will not take place before August 1 but that the party is still committed to holding a vote before August 7, which had been the filing deadline to get on Ohioās presidential ballot.
āWe will not be implementing a rushed virtual voting process,ā Daughtry and Walz wrote, āthough we will begin our important consideration of how a virtual voting process would workā.
The Democratic convention opens on August 19 in Chicago but the party announced in May that it would hold an early roll call to ensure Biden would qualify for the ballot in Ohio.
Ohio originally had an August 7 deadline but has since changed its rules.
Bidenās campaign insists that the party must operate under Ohioās initial rules to ensure Republican lawmakers cannot mount legal challenges to keep the president off the ballot.
Even if Democrats conduct a virtual roll call vote ahead of their convention, meanwhile, it would not necessarily lock Biden into the nomination.
The DNC rule-making arm could vote to hold an in-person roll call in Chicago, said Elaine Kamarck, a longtime member of that committee and expert on the partyās nominating process.
But since the Ohio law does not go into effect until September 1, Biden appearing on the stateās ballot remains a real concern, Kamarck said.
āThis is a failsafe for the Democrats,ā Kamarck said, adding that āthe convention is the highest authorityā in the nominating process.
The AP-NORC poll, conducted as Biden works to salvage his candidacy two weeks after his debate flop, also found that only about three in 10 Democrats are extremely or very confident that he has the mental capability to serve effectively as president, down slightly from 40 per cent in an AP-NORC poll in February.
with AP
