By CHRIS MEGERIAN and DAR­LENE SU­PERVILLE | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — Pres­i­dent Joe Biden on Wednes­day emerged from five days of iso­la­tion af­ter con­tract­ing the coro­n­avirus, telling Amer­i­cans that “COVID isn’t gone” but say­ing se­ri­ous ill­ness can be avoid­ed with vac­cines, boost­er shoots and treat­ments.

“You don’t need to be pres­i­dent to get these tools,” he said.

Biden had a mild bout with the virus that has killed mil­lions of peo­ple around the world and dis­rupt­ed dai­ly life for more than two years.

“God bless you all, and now I get to go back to the Oval Of­fice,” he said as he fin­ished his re­marks in the Rose Gar­den and re­turned to the West Wing.

Biden test­ed neg­a­tive for the virus on Tues­day night and Wednes­day morn­ing.

“Back to the Oval,” Biden tweet­ed af­ter the White House re­leased the lat­est dai­ly up­date from his doc­tor con­firm­ing that he was clear to end the iso­la­tion pe­ri­od that is re­quired af­ter some­one tests pos­i­tive for the coro­n­avirus.

Biden’s tweet in­clud­ed a pho­to of a rapid COVID-19 test with the line show­ing a neg­a­tive re­sult.

“Thanks to Doc for the good care, and to all of you for your sup­port,” the pres­i­dent’s tweet said.

Biden, 79, test­ed pos­i­tive last week. He con­tin­ued to work dur­ing iso­la­tion, hold­ing meet­ings vir­tu­al­ly and ad­dress­ing groups through record­ed mes­sages.

Dr. Kevin O’Con­nor, Biden’s physi­cian, wrote in Wednes­day’s up­date that the pres­i­dent had com­plet­ed a five-day course of Paxlovid, an an­ti-vi­ral drug used to treat COVID-19. Biden re­mains free of fever and had not used Tylenol in the past 36 hours.

Biden’s symp­toms were al­most “com­plete­ly re­solved,” O’Con­nor re­port­ed.

“Giv­en these re­as­sur­ing fac­tors, the pres­i­dent will dis­con­tin­ue his strict iso­la­tion mea­sures,” the doc­tor wrote.

Biden plans to wear a “well-fit­ting” face mask for five more days any­time he is around oth­ers.