President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump have tested positive for the coronavirus just days after one of his closest advisers who also had COVID-19 traveled with him aboard Air Force One.
Trump announced the diagnosis in a tweet:
In a statement dated Oct. 1, 2020, Dr. Sean Conley, physician to the president, confirmed the diagnosis.
“The President and First Lady are both well at this time, and they plan to remain at home within the White House during their convalescence,” Conley stated.
He also claimed Trump would continue to “carry out his duties without disruption while recovering.”
Trump, who is 74 and is considered obese, according to an assessment in June by the White House physician, faces an increased risk of severe illness from the coronavirus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have long warned that older adults and those with a body mass index of 30 or above are at increased risk of hospitalization and possibly the need for intensive care should they become infected.
Hope Hicks, a counselor and senior adviser to the president, tested positive for COVID-19 after traveling with Trump on Tuesday for his first presidential debate with Democratic rival Joe Biden.
People close to Hicks told Bloomberg News that she was experiencing symptoms of the virus. She was photographed not wearing a mask as she arrived at the airport in Cleveland for the debate.
Trump’s infection also comes after many of his family members attended the debate in Ohio without wearing masks, even after a Cleveland Clinic doctor asked barefaced members of the audience to put them on.
At the debate, Trump also mocked Biden’s wearing of masks at campaign events while falsely claiming there had been “no negative effect” from any of his large campaign rallies in recent weeks. (After a June 20 rally in Oklahoma, health officials cited it as the “likely” source of a surge in local cases.)
“He could be speaking 200 feet away and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen,” Trump said of Biden’s use of face coverings and his decision not to hold large in-person campaign events.
The president’s infection comes amid his ongoing efforts to declare that the nation has largely moved past the worst threats of the pandemic and could reopen large swaths of the economy, a positive election season message that health experts have warned could not be further from reality.
More than 207,000 people in the U.S. have now died of the coronavirus, and more than 7.3 million have been infected. Cases remain high or are rising in more than a dozen states even after an economically devastating shutdown period in nearly every corner of the country.