Spokesman: Ex-President George H.W. Bush in intensive care unit at Houston hospital

HOUSTON -- A spokesman says former President George H.W. Bush is in the intensive care unit at a Houston hospital.

Bush’s spokesman, Jim McGrath, said Wednesday evening that the former president has been in the ICU at Methodist Hospital since Sunday.

No details were immediately provided. But earlier Wednesday, McGrath said a fever that kept Bush in the hospital over Christmas had gotten worse and that doctors had put him on a liquids-only diet.

A bronchitis-like cough initially brought Bush to the hospital on Nov. 23.

McGrath says the cough has improved, and that the 88-year-old is now coughing about once a day.

Bush was visited on Christmas by his wife, Barbara, his son, Neil, and Neil’s wife, Maria, and a grandson, McGrath said. Bush’s daughter, Dorothy, will arrive Wednesday in Houston from Bethesda, Md. The 41st president has also been visited twice by his sons, George W. Bush, the 43rd president, and Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida.

Bush and his wife live in Houston during the winter and spend their summers at a home in Kennebunkport, Maine.

The former president was a naval aviator in World War II — at one point the youngest in the Navy — and was shot down over the Pacific. He achieved notoriety in retirement for skydiving on at least three of his birthdays since leaving the White House in 1992.