Clinton "doing fine" and will be out of hospital soon

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Bill Clinton is doing fine and will be released soon from a Southern California hospital where he's being treated for an infection, President Joe Biden said.

Biden said Friday during remarks at the University of Connecticut that he had spoken to Clinton and the former president “sends his best.”

"He’s doing fine; he really is," Biden said.

“He’s not in any serious condition," Biden said. “He is getting out shortly, as I understand it. Whether that’s tomorrow or the next day, I don’t know.”

Clinton, 75, was admitted to the University of California Irvine Medical Center, southeast of Los Angeles, on Tuesday with an infection unrelated to COVID-19, his spokesman said.

An aide to the former president said Clinton had a urological infection that spread to his bloodstream, but he is on the mend and never went into septic shock, a potentially life-threatening condition.

Clinton spokesman Angel Ureña said Friday that Clinton would remain hospitalized overnight to receive further intravenous antibiotics.

“All health indicators are trending in the right direction, including his white blood count which has decreased significantly,” Ureña said in a statement.

“President Clinton continues to be in excellent spirits, and is deeply grateful for the outstanding care he is receiving and the well wishes that people have sent from across America and around the world,” the statement said.

The aide, who spoke to reporters at the hospital on the condition his name wasn’t used, said Clinton was in an intensive care section of the hospital but wasn't receiving ICU care.

Clinton was reading books and watching TV coverage about his hospitalization, the aide said. Hillary Clinton was with him in the hospital, though not his daughter, Chelsea Clinton.

In the years since Clinton left the White House in 2001, the former president has faced health scares. In 2004, he underwent quadruple bypass surgery after experiencing prolonged chest pains and shortness of breath. He returned to the hospital for surgery for a partially collapsed lung in 2005, and in 2010 he had a pair of stents implanted in a coronary artery.

He responded by embracing a largely vegan diet that saw him lose weight and report improved health.

Clinton repeatedly returned to the stump, campaigning for Democratic candidates, mostly notably his wife, Hillary, during her failed 2008 bid for the presidential nomination. And in 2016, as Hillary Clinton sought the White House as the Democratic nominee, Bill Clinton — by then a grandfather and nearing 70 — returned to the campaign trail.

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Associated Press writer Zeke Miller contributed from Hartford, Connecticut. Associated Press writer Alexandra Jaffe contributed from Washington.