Former US President Bill Clinton has been discharged from hospital in California after being treated for an infection.

Mr Clinton was seen walking out of the University of California Irvine Medical Centre at around midday on Sunday, after spending five nights at the facility.

The ex-commander-in-chief had been admitted on Tuesday for the infection, which was unrelated to COVID-19, officials said.

An aide to Mr Clinton said he had been diagnosed with a urological infection which had spread to his bloodstream.

Leaving the hospital, Mr Clinton, wearing jeans and a sports jacket, shook hands with doctors and nurses who had lined up to speak to him.

He then gave a thumbs up to a journalist who asked him how he was feeling, before boarding a black SUV with his wife, Hilary, to join a motorcade escorted by highway patrol.

Mr Clinton’s “fever and white blood cell count are normalised, and he will return home to New York to finish his course of antibiotics”, Dr Alpesh N Amin said in a statement shared on Twitter by a Clinton spokesman.

A Clinton aide previously told reporters that the former president had been treated in the health centre’s intensive care unit, but had not received ICU care.

Mr Clinton has seen several health scares since he left the White House in 2001.

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He underwent quadruple bypass surgery after he experienced prolonged chest pains and shortness of breath in 2004.

Mr Clinton also went to hospital for surgery for a partially collapsed lung in 2005. In 2010, he had a pair of stents implanted in a coronary artery.