By WILL WEIS­SERT and CHRIS MEGERIAN | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — For more than a year, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s abil­i­ty to avoid the coro­n­avirus seemed to de­fy the odds. When he fi­nal­ly did test pos­i­tive, the White House was ready. It set out to turn the di­ag­no­sis in­to a “teach­able mo­ment” and dis­pel any no­tion of a cri­sis.

“The pres­i­dent does what every oth­er per­son in Amer­i­ca does every day, which is he takes rea­son­able pre­cau­tions against COVID but does his job,” White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain told MSNBC late in the af­ter­noon on Thurs­day.

It was a day that be­gan with Biden’s COVID-19 re­sults and in­clud­ed re­peat­ed as­sur­ances over the com­ing hours that the pres­i­dent was hard at work while iso­lat­ing in the res­i­den­tial ar­eas of the White House with “very mild symp­toms” in­clud­ing a run­ny nose, dry cough and fa­tigue.

Biden, in a blaz­er and Ox­ford shirt, record­ed a video from the White House bal­cony telling peo­ple: “I’m do­ing well, get­ting a lot of work done. And, in the mean­time, thanks for your con­cern. And keep the faith. It’s go­ing to be OK.”

“Keep­ing busy!” he al­so tweet­ed.

On Fri­day, Biden was sched­uled to meet vir­tu­al­ly with his eco­nom­ic team and se­nior ad­vi­sors to dis­cuss con­gres­sion­al pri­or­i­ties.

It was all part of an ad­min­is­tra­tion ef­fort to shift the nar­ra­tive from a health scare to a dis­play of Biden as the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the idea that most Amer­i­cans can get COVID and re­cov­er with­out too much suf­fer­ing and dis­rup­tion if they’ve got­ten their shots and tak­en oth­er im­por­tant steps to pro­tect them­selves.

The mes­sage was craft­ed to al­le­vi­ate vot­ers’ con­cerns about Biden’s health — at 79, he’s the old­est per­son ever to be pres­i­dent. And it was aimed at demon­strat­ing to the coun­try that the pan­dem­ic is far less of a threat than it was be­fore Biden took of­fice, thanks to wide­spread vac­cines and new ther­a­peu­tic drugs.

Con­vey­ing that sen­ti­ment on Day 1 of Biden’s coro­n­avirus ex­pe­ri­ence virus wasn’t al­ways easy, though.

In a lengthy brief­ing with re­porters, White House press sec­re­tary Karine Jean-Pierre said re­peat­ed­ly that the White House had been as trans­par­ent as pos­si­ble about the pres­i­dent’s health. But she par­ried with re­porters over specifics. And when pressed about where Biden might have con­tract­ed the virus, she re­spond­ed, “I don’t think that that mat­ters, right? I think what mat­ters is we pre­pared for this mo­ment.”

Jean-Pierre and White House COVID-⁠19 Re­sponse Co­or­di­na­tor Dr. Ashish Jha didn’t ful­ly an­swer ques­tions about whether Biden be­gan iso­lat­ing as soon as he start­ed ex­pe­ri­enc­ing symp­toms on Wednes­day night, as fed­er­al guide­lines sug­gest, or did so fol­low­ing his pos­i­tive test the next day. Jha de­clined to spec­u­late on some as­pects of the pres­i­dent’s prog­no­sis, char­ac­ter­iz­ing the ques­tions as hy­po­thet­i­cals.

Michael Os­ter­holm, di­rec­tor of the Cen­ter for In­fec­tious Dis­ease Re­search and Pol­i­cy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta, said it’s im­por­tant for Amer­i­cans to know they must re­main care­ful about the virus, which con­tin­ues to kill hun­dreds of peo­ple dai­ly.

“That’s the bal­ance that we have to strike,” Os­ter­holm said. “The pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States will do very well. But that may not be true for every­one.”

Biden’s first-day symp­toms were mild in large part be­cause he’s ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and boost­ed, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment is­sued by his physi­cian, Dr. Kevin O’Con­nor. The pres­i­dent al­so is tak­ing Paxlovid, an an­tivi­ral drug de­signed to re­duce the sever­i­ty of the dis­ease.

Jha said Biden’s case was be­ing pri­or­i­tized, mean­ing it will like­ly take less than a week for se­quenc­ing to de­ter­mine which vari­ant of the virus Biden con­tract­ed. Omi­cron’s high­ly con­ta­gious BA.5 sub-strain is re­spon­si­ble for 78% of new COVID-19 in­fec­tions re­port­ed in the U.S. last week, ac­cord­ing to the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion’s lat­est da­ta re­leased Tues­day.

Jean-Pierre said first la­dy Jill Biden was in close con­tact with the pres­i­dent, but she de­clined to dis­cuss oth­ers who al­so might have been ex­posed, cit­ing pri­va­cy rea­sons. Biden had trav­elled to Mass­a­chu­setts a day ear­li­er to pro­mote ef­forts to com­bat cli­mate change and flew on Air Force One with sev­er­al De­mo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers, in­clud­ing Mass­a­chu­setts Sen. Eliz­a­beth War­ren.

A White House of­fi­cial con­firmed that Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris was al­so in close con­tact with Biden, and Klain said he was too.

Klain, who said he hoped the pres­i­dent’s test­ing pos­i­tive a “teach­able mo­ment” for the coun­try, said the White House wasn’t aware of any pos­i­tive COVID re­sults that were linked to the pres­i­dent’s case.

Dur­ing her brief­ing, Jean-Pierre bris­tled at sug­ges­tions the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion wasn’t be­ing much more forth­com­ing with in­for­ma­tion about the pres­i­dent’s ill­ness than that of his pre­de­ces­sor, Don­ald Trump. The for­mer pres­i­dent con­tract­ed COVID-19 in the fall of 2020, be­fore vac­cines were avail­able, and was hos­pi­tal­ized at Wal­ter Reed Na­tion­al Mil­i­tary Med­ical Cen­ter for three nights.

“I whole­heart­ed­ly dis­agree,” Jean-Pierre said of com­par­i­son. “We are do­ing this very dif­fer­ent­ly — very dif­fer­ent­ly — than the last ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

Asked about the pos­si­bil­i­ty Biden might need to be hos­pi­tal­ized, Jha stressed that the pres­i­dent was “do­ing well” and added that there were “ob­vi­ous­ly a lot of re­sources avail­able here at the White House to take care of him.”

“Wal­ter Reed is al­ways on stand­by for pres­i­dents. That’s al­ways an op­tion,” he added. “That’s true whether the pres­i­dent had COVID or not.”

Dr. Leana Wen, a pub­lic health pro­fes­sor at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, said it was good for the White House to send the mes­sage that Biden can keep work­ing even af­ter test­ing pos­i­tive.

“That shows that it’s busi­ness as usu­al,” Wen said.

Jean-Pierre’s pre­de­ces­sor, Jen Psa­ki, not­ed that White House of­fi­cials have “been prepar­ing for this prob­a­bly for sev­er­al months now, giv­en the per­cent­age of peo­ple in the coun­try who have test­ed pos­i­tive.”

“What they need to do over the next cou­ple of days is show him work­ing and show him still ac­tive and serv­ing as pres­i­dent and I’m cer­tain they’ll like­ly do that,” Psa­ki, who left her post as White House press sec­re­tary in May, said on MSNBC, where she’s be­com­ing a com­men­ta­tor.

Biden plans to con­tin­ue to iso­late un­til he tests neg­a­tive, the White House said.

Dr. Er­ic Topol, head of Scripps Re­search Trans­la­tion­al In­sti­tute, said that could mean he’s “out of com­mis­sion from in­ter­act­ing with peo­ple for at least eight to 10 days.”

“This could go on eas­i­ly for a cou­ple of weeks, but the good thing is they are go­ing to mon­i­tor him very care­ful­ly,” Topol said. “That is what we should be do­ing for every­one so that we don’t keep play­ing in­to the virus’ hands, caus­ing more spread when it’s al­ready hy­per-spread­able.”