Bill Clinton leaves hospital after treatment for infection

Former US president, 75, was treated for a urological infection that spread to his bloodstream

Former US president Bill Clinton has been discharged from hospital. Photo: AFP

Bill Clinton has been discharged from hospital after being treated for an infection.

The former US president, 75, was being treated at the University of California Irvine Medical Centre.

He was admitted on Tuesday with an infection unrelated to Covid-19, officials said.

Clinton spokesman Angel Urena had said Mr Clinton would remain in hospital for one more night to receive further intravenous antibiotics, but all health indicators were “trending in the right direction”.

An aide to the former president said Mr Clinton had a urological infection which had spread to his bloodstream.

He gave a thumbs-up when a reporter asked how he was feeling. He and his wife, Hillary, then sat in a black car and left in a motorcade escorted by the California Highway Patrol.

Mr Clinton’s “fever and white blood cell count are normalised, and he will return home to New York to finish his course of antibiotics,” Dr Alpesh N Amin said in a statement shared on Twitter by a spokesman for the Clintons.

President Joe Biden said on Friday night that he had spoken to Mr Clinton, and the former president “sends his best”.

“He’s doing fine; he really is,” Mr Biden said during remarks at the University of Connecticut.

Mr Clinton has faced health scares since leaving the White House in 2001.

In 2004, he underwent quadruple bypass surgery after experiencing prolonged chest pains and shortness of breath.

He had surgery for a partially collapsed lung in 2005, and in 2010 he had a pair of stents implanted in a coronary artery.

Mr Clinton responded by embracing a largely vegan diet. He said it helped him to lose weight and that his health had improved.

He repeatedly returned to campaign for Democratic candidates, most notably his wife, Hillary, during her failed 2008 bid for the presidential nomination.

And in 2016, as Hillary sought the White House as the Democratic nominee, her husband – by then a grandfather and nearing 70 – returned to the campaign trail.