Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was released from an intensive care unit at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Monday, just days after it was disclosed that he had been hospitalized since New Year’s Day with a complication from a pre-Christmas medical procedure, the Washington Post reports. Austin’s absence was apparently news to even his second-in-command at the Pentagon, who was on vacation in Puerto Rico when she assumed some of Austin’s duties last week after he was already hospitalized.
The White House reportedly did not learn of Austin’s hospitalization until Thursday, a lapse a Pentagon spokesperson attributed to a series of untimely events, absences and illnesses that coalesced around the holiday period.