Joe Biden has been forced to pull out of a campaign speech after contracting COVID.

The US president was due to deliver an address to UnidosUS – the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organisation – in Las Vegas later today.

Mr Biden is experiencing mild symptoms, the White House said, including “general malaise” from the infection.

He will return to his home in Delaware to self-isolate and from where he will “continue to carry out all of his duties fully during that time”, Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

A post on the president’s X feed said simply: “I’m sick.”

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Biden suffering ‘general malaise’: Follow latest on US presidential race

Mr Biden – who is facing mounting pressure to quit the presidential race over his age – wasn’t wearing a mask as he boarded Air Force One from Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas.

Image:
Mr Biden met customers at a restaurant in Las Vegas before testing positive for COVID. Pic: Susan Walsh/AP

Asked by the press how he was feeling, the 81-year-old said: “Good. I feel good.”

He then walked cautiously up the stairs to his plane.

David Blevins, Sky correspondent: The timing is a disaster

This couldn’t have come at a worse moment for President Biden.

The White House says his symptoms are “mild” but it will raise further questions about his health.

His doctor using terms like “upper respiratory symptoms” only adds to those concerns.

Republicans will be quick to contrast Donald Trump surviving a bullet, while Joe Biden is floored by a virus.

The timing is a disaster too – the positive result coinciding with another Democrat urging him to go.

That will fuel a barrage of conspiracy theories about the scale of moves afoot to replace him as a candidate.

An official said Mr Biden presented this afternoon with upper respiratory symptoms, including a runny nose and a cough.

The president is vaccinated and boosted, they added. He has also been given a first dose of Paxlovid, an antiviral medicine that works by stopping the virus that causes COVID-19 from growing and spreading in the body.

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It comes just hours after an excerpt from a recorded interview emerged in which Mr Biden said he would only consider dropping out of the presidential race with Donald Trump, if he was told to do so because of a medical condition.

Mr Biden was asked if there was anything which would make him rethink his candidacy for a second term in the White House during an interview with Ed Gordon of BET News.

Read more:
Biden’s doctor on ‘extremely detailed neurological exam’

“If I had some medical condition that emerged, if somebody, if doctors came to me and said, ‘you got this problem and that problem’,” the president said.

Concerns around Mr Biden’s health have risen since his poor showing in a TV debate with Mr Trump.

The president has since insisted he is “firmly committed” to staying in the race.

The White House said last week that Mr Biden is not being treated for Parkinson’s disease following reports that a specialist doctor had visited the US president several times in the past year.