A pharmaceutical company representative fainted on Thursday during a White House announcement event on obesity medications as U.S. President Donald Trump and the others looked on. The event had to be halted after the incident.
He was caught by two others as he was falling to the ground. Immediately after, Dr Mehmet Oz, the Trump administrator of the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services, rushed to help the man and offered him medical attention.
In the video captured of the incident, Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks calls out, “Are you OK? Gordon, you OK?” to the man who seemed to have lost balance, the New York Post reported.
White House aids told reporters that they needed to leave the Oval Office.
Moments later, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told the attendees that the man was fine.
“The White House medical unit quickly jumped into action, and the gentleman is okay. The press conference will resume shortly,” she said in a statement.
When the press conference was restarted, Trump said that the attendee had gotten a ‘little bit lightheaded.”
“You saw he went down, and he’s fine. We just sent him out and he’s got doctor’s care, but he’s fine,” he said. “So we had a little bit of an interruption.”
The cause of the man’s fainting was not disclosed. However, it’s reportedly not the first time people have fainted during a white house event. Dr Oz’s 11-year-old granddaughter had fainted during his swearing-in ceremony earlier this year.
The event was to announce the reduction of prices for some weight loss pills. The attendees included representatives from Novo Nordisk, which makes the popular weight-loss medication Ozempic, and Eli Lilly, the maker of Zepbound.
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