The team has also said there is nothing that is being done for Trump at the Walter Reed military hospital that cannot be done at the White House.

Asked if the president had pressured the doctors for his discharge, Dr Conley said they try to get patients out of hospital as quickly as possible, and that any time patients spend at hospital unnecessarily is a risk to themselves.

He said the team remained "cautiously optimistic" about the president's recovery.

The medical team also said the president did not have any respiratory complaints and has not had a fever in more than 72 hours.

They say Trump's oxygen levels are normal.

White House physician Dr Sean Conley says President Trump has continued to improve and is ready to be discharged.

"He may not be entirely out of the woods yet", the doctor said, but can safely return to the White House.

President Trump's doctors have stepped outside Walter Reed Medical Center to update the world on his condition.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Monday that an additional 36,778 cases of coronavirus were detected in the previous 24-hour period.

The latest data brings the total number of US infections to 7,396,730.

An additional 378 deaths were also reported across the country, raising the US death toll to 209,199.

The US has both the highest number of Covid-19 cases and the highest number of deaths in the world.

Image source, EPA

The morning began with Trump's press secretary - who has held numerous briefings without wearing a mask since the president announced his positive diagnosis on Friday - confirming that she has tested positive for coronavirus.

Here's what else is happening:

• Trump's doctors are due to hold a news conference in the next few minutes to discuss his health condition
• Moments ago the president tweeted that he plans to leave hospital later today, adding: "I feel better than I did 20 years ago!"
• Trump, who is facing re-election in less than one month, also called on Americans to not fear the virus and to not let it "dominate your life"

Pastor Greg Laurie, who attended the White House Rose Garden event on 26 September where Trump announced his Supreme Court nomination, has just confirmed that he tested positive for Covid-19 on Friday.

In a Facebook video message, he told supporters: "I have always taken the coronavirus seriously, and it has tragically taken many lives.

"At a time like this, we need to pray for those that have it and avoid politicising it. If our President and First Lady can get Covid-19, clearly anyone can."

Read more:

Trump's White House event in focus over Covid spread

Image source, EPA

Donald Trump has just tweeted that he is going to leave the hospital later today.

His announcement came just before a press conference with his doctors was due to start.

The White House has just announced that President Trump's doctors will shortly brief the media on his health condition.

Dr Sean Conley, whose formal title is physician to the president, will hold the news conference outside Walter Reed hospital at 15:00 local time (19:00GMT).

Image source, Horcel Kamaha

Scientists now think a loss of taste and smell is the best way of knowing you've caught the virus, but it wasn't until April that it was added to the list of symptoms.

People who have experienced long-lasting symptoms, known as "long Covid", have been telling the BBC what it's like to lose their sense of taste and smell.

Horcel Kamaha, 23, who contracted coronavirus in March, said: "I felt confused but it was so early on (in the pandemic), I just went about my business as normal.

"I was concerned about my own body odour, you know, you'll smell your clothes to see if it needs a wash."

His loss of taste lasted for three months but his sense of smell has still not recovered.

"I can officially say Covid-19 ruined my sense of smell and I'm kind of worried it's permanent." Read more stories here.

Image source, Reuters

On Sunday night, President Trump made the controversial decision to greet supporters in a drive-past outside the hospital where he is being treated for Covid-19.

That trip, made during a pandemic and just weeks ahead of a presidential election, has sharply divided opinion.

On the one hand, medical experts have criticised President Trump for potentially exposing the Secret Service agents who accompanied him on the ride to the virus.

Dr Craig Spencer, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Columbia University Medical Center, told the BBC he was “absolutely flabbergasted” to see President Trump being driven around.

“I think the reason that our [pandemic] response has been one of the worst in the world is that the people who signed off on that joyride yesterday are the same people who are in charge of our pandemic response,” he said.

On the other hand, supporters seemed impressed by the drive-by visit, seeing it as classic Trump showmanship.

"I think that was courageous and probably against a roomful of people's medical advice but, you know, Trump is a warrior and a guy that likes to play to the crowd,” Republican donor Dan Eberhardt told the BBC.

Read more: President criticised over drive-past

James Gallagher
Health and science correspondent, BBC News

Image source, Getty Images

Since testing positive for coronavirus, doctors in the US have revealed some of the drugs that Trump has been taking.

So what are they, and what do they tell us about his condition?

Dexamethasone - This steroid saves lives by calming the immune system, but it needs to be used at the right time. Give it too early and the drug could make things worse by impairing the body's ability to fight off the virus.

This is not a drug you would usually give in the "mild" stage of the disease.

Dexamethasone's side effects include anxiety, altered mood and cognitive impairment, but these are more common with prolonged use, rather than the short course that Trump is currently receiving.

Monoclonal antibody therapy - This is a combination of antibodies, made by the company Regeneron, which mimic our own immune response.

The antibodies physically stick to the coronavirus so they can't get inside the body's cells and they make the virus more "visible" to the rest of the immune system.

The evidence in patients is still very limited and these monoclonals are still classed as an experimental drug - clinical trials are ongoing. The president is one of only a handful of people outside those trials to undergo the treatment under what is known as "compassionate use".

Read more about the other medications Trump is taking:

Dexamethasone, remdesivir, Regeneron: Trump covid's treatment explained

Image source, Getty Images

Argentinian football icon Diego Maradona has been tested for the coronavirus, his lawyer has tweeted.

Lawyer Matias Morla wrote that the former striker had been swabbed at home "for the peace of mind", with results expected within the next 24 hours.

Widely regarded as one of the great football players of all time, Maradona, 59, has been coaching Argentine club Gimnasia since September 2019.

Maradona left his previous managerial role at Mexican second division outfit Dorados de Sinaloa earlier that year, citing health issues.

Image source, Getty Images

The mayor of New York City has requested the state's permission to place new lockdown orders on nine neighbourhoods in Brooklyn and Queens that are currently experiencing growing rates of tests coming back positive for coronavirus.

It would mean the first new lockdown orders in the state, which only last month began to allow things like indoor dining to resume in the former epicentre of the US outbreak.

According to Mayor Bill de Blasio, the shutdown would affect 500,000 people living in those communities. It would force non-essential businesses to close, restaurants to revert to takeout only and require schools to close for in-person learning.

Image source, Reuters

Spain has reported a rise of 23,480 coronavirus infections over the weekend, making it the first western European country to record more than 800,000 cases in total.

The increase pushes the official count of infections since the start of the pandemic in Spain to 813,412, the eight-highest total in the world.

The death toll reached 32,225, up from 32,086 on Friday, Spain’s health ministry said.

"We are still very concerned, the next few weeks are going to be very tough," Health Minister Salvador Illa said at a news conference on Monday.

Spain was one of the first European countries to see a second spike of coronavirus infections at the tail end of summer.

Since then, the Spanish government has moved to impose restrictions to curb the spread of the disease in hotspots such as the capital Madrid.

On Monday, a ban on non-essential travel began in Madrid. Under the new rules, residents can only cross city boundaries for work, school, health or shopping.

Leo Kelion
Technology desk editor

The BBC has confirmed the missing Covid-19 test data was caused by the ill-thought-out use of Microsoft's Excel software. Furthermore, Public Health England (PHE) was to blame, rather than a third-party contractor.

The issue was caused by the way the agency brought together logs produced by the commercial firms paid to carry out swab tests for the virus.

They filed their results in the form of text-based lists, without issue.

PHE had set up an automatic process to pull this data together into Excel templates so that it could then be uploaded to a central system and made available to the NHS Test and Trace team as well as other government computer dashboards.

The problem is that the PHE developers picked an old file format to do this - known as XLS.

As a consequence, each template could handle only about 65,000 rows of data rather than the one million-plus rows that Excel is actually capable of.

And since each test result created several rows of data, in practice it meant that each template was limited to about 1,400 cases. When that total was reached, further cases were simply left off.

Until last week, there were not enough test results being generated by private labs for this to have been a problem - PHE is confident that test results were not previously missed because of this issue.

And in its defence, the agency would note that it caught most of the cases within a day or two of the records slipping through its net.

To handle the problem, PHE is now breaking down the data into smaller batches to create a larger number of Excel templates in order to make sure none hit their cap.

According to US media, the cousin-in-law of White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany is among the more junior staff members of the White House to have their tests come back positive in recent days.

Chad Gilmartin, who is cousins with McEnany's husband, works as the White House principal assistant press secretary. According to ABC News, he tested positive over the weekend - the day before McEnany did.

Bloomberg reporter Jennifer Jacobs says assistant press secretary Karoline Leavitt is also among those that have tested positive.

It's important to note that the White House has not said how many staff total members have now tested positive.

Restrictions on parent and baby groups in Scotland have been relaxed after a public backlash, doubling the number of adults who can attend to 10.

The new rules, which apply to groups with children under the age of 12 months, require people to keep their distance and for everyone over the age of five to wear a face covering.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon acknowledged that parent and baby groups "are vital in supporting health and wellbeing" and she hoped the new rules "strike a better balance".

One childcare business owner previously told the BBC that the restrictions had risked making their work unviable and meant babies missed out on social interaction.

"I have babies who have come along who have never seen another baby because they were born in lockdown," she said.

Our chart shows how the number of confirmed cases have been growing.

Tara McKelvey
BBC News, Washington

Over the past several days, many staffers who work at the White House have begun to wear a mask consistently - a departure from how it had been before the president was infected.

Kayleigh McEnany was not one of them.

She spoke with me and others on Friday outside of the West Wing, and she chose not to wear a mask in that moment.

She was following the example of Larry Kudlow, the director of Trump’s National Economic Council, who had spoken with us earlier in the day, also without a mask.

In this way, they were conveying the president’s upbeat assessment of the virus and how it was nearly under control. Both McEnany and Kudlow stood two metres from us, following guidelines on social distancing.

Yet it was striking to see them go about their daily lives in a way that seemed largely unaffected by the virus.

The fact that she has tested positive is a reminder of just how dangerous – and contagious – the virus is.

It is also a reminder that conveying the president’s message through words and actions – whether about the virus or other matters - is a risky undertaking.

Image source, Getty Images