Bill Clinton discharged from hospital after recovering from infection

Bill Clinton was released from a southern California hospital on Sunday morning where he was treated for an infection.

The former president was discharged at around 8am from the University of California Irvine Medical Center.

Mr Clinton, aged 75, was admitted to the hospital southeast of Los Angeles on Tuesday with an infection unrelated to Covid-19, officials said.

Angel Ureña, a spokesperson for the 42nd president, said on Saturday that he would remain hospitalised one more night to receive further intravenous antibiotics.

All of his health indicators were “trending in the right direction,” Mr Ureña said.

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

Dr Alpesh Amin, chair of the Department of Medicine and executive director of hospital medicine at UC Irvine Health, oversaw the team of doctors treating President Clinton.

“President Clinton was discharged from UC Irvine Medical Center today,” said Dr Amin. “His fever and white blood cell count are normalised and he will return home to New York to finish his course of antibiotics.”

“On behalf of everyone at UC Irvine Medical Center, we were honoured to have treated him and will continue to monitor his progress.”

Mr Clinton was seen leaving the hospital with his wife, former first lady and former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.

They thanked staff as they made their way out of the facility to the waiting car.

The former president was admitted to the intensive care unit of the hospital after he complained of fatigue. He was diagnosed with sepsis, a blood infection, and was kept in the ICU for privacy and safety reasons and not because of any kind of seriousness of the illness.

Sepsis is an infection that spreads to the bloodstream, in Mr Clinton’s case the origin is believed to have been a urinary tract infection.

He was “admitted to the hospital for close monitoring and administered IV antibiotics and fluids,” his physicians said in a joint statement.

The doctors ruled out any link to his history of cardiac and pulmonary conditions.

Mr Clinton underwent quadruple bypass heart surgery in 2004 and in 2010 had two stents inserted in an artery after experiencing chest pains and shortness of breath.

Between these years, in 2005, Mr Clinton had to undergo lung surgery for a partially collapsed lung.