President Joe Biden, 80, will be tested Thursday ahead of the expected announcement that he will run for a second four-year term.

Biden’s meeting with doctors at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland will include his second extensive examination since taking office in January 2021.

His latest tests, in November 2021, showed the president to be a “healthy, vigorous 78-year-old man,” his doctors said. He had a polyp removed from his colon.

Biden, already the oldest US president, has defied questions about his age and made a number of legislative strides in his first two years in office, but voters are worried about the next four.

About three-quarters of Americans, including more than half of Democrats and a vast majority of Republicans, believe Biden is too old to govern, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted Feb. 6-13. A majority of Democratic respondents said the president remains mentally stable, but about half of them said he can’t handle the physical toll of the presidency.

Biden will be 86 years old by the end of a possible future second term, making him 13 years older than the average American life expectancy, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2020 data.

At a final checkup, Biden’s White House doctor, Kevin O’Connor, deemed him fit for duty. O’Connor attributed Biden’s stiff gait to spondylitis and “peripheral neuropathy”, or some loss of sensation in the legs.

Biden’s doctors are likely to give him a neurological exam Thursday, as is typical for people in his age group who are more vulnerable to falls, Borna Bonakdarpour, an assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, told Reuters.

They will also likely test Biden’s vision and hearing, as well as “anything he can complain about,” Dr. Bonakdarpour said. Biden’s cognitive function appeared to be good during a recent State of the Union address, the doctor said. Biden told Judy Woodruff in an interview with PBS last week that any American concerned about their age should “watch me” as I serve as president.

Source: Reuters.