“We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately,” he said.
Trump’s positive test comes just hours after the White House announced that Senior Assistant Hope Hicks contracted the virus after traveling with the president several times this week. Trump is 74 years old, putting him at higher risk for serious complications from a virus that has now killed more than 200,000 people across the country.
“Tonight, (at) FLOTUS and I tested positive for Covid-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through it TOGETHER!” Trump tweeted.
Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately.… Https://t.co/CIIB2LDQtr
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 1601614446000
The diagnosis marks a major blow for a president who has been desperately trying to convince the American public that the worst of the pandemic is behind us, even as cases continue to rise with less than four months to go before Election Day. And it stands as the most serious public health scare known to any sitting American president in recent history.
Symptoms of Covid-19 can include fever, cough, and shortness of breath. Most people develop only mild symptoms. But some people, usually those with other medical complications, develop more serious symptoms, including pneumonia, which can be fatal.
In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday, Trump said he was awaiting the results of a Covid-19 test. “If we quarantine her or if we have her, I don’t know,” he said, adding that first lady Melania Trump was also waiting for the results.
Hicks traveled with the president several times this week, including aboard Marine One, the presidential helicopter, and Air Force One to a rally in Minnesota on Wednesday, and aboard Air Force One for the first presidential debate Tuesday night. in Cleveland.
Trump had consistently downplayed concerns about being personally vulnerable to contracting Covid-19, even after White House staff and allies were exposed and ill.
“I didn’t feel any vulnerability,” he told reporters in May.
Instead, he has encouraged governors to reopen their states and has sought to focus the nation’s attention on efforts to revive the economy, not on a rising death toll, as he seeks another four-year term.
Some studies suggest that Covid-19 patients who are obese may be at higher risk of becoming seriously ill from the virus, although it is unclear if that is because they are more likely to have other health conditions such as heart disease or diabetes. In his 2019 physical, Trump reached the technical threshold for obesity.
The news would surely shake an already shaken nation still struggling with how to safely reopen while avoiding more spikes. The White House has access to nearly unlimited resources, including a steady supply of quick-result tests, yet it still failed to keep the president safe, raising questions about how the rest of the country will be able to protect its workers, students, and children. citizens. public how to reopen businesses and schools.
Trump, the vice president and other high-level personnel have been tested daily for Covid-19 since two people working at the White House complex tested positive in early May, prompting the White House to take precautions. Everyone who comes into contact with the president also receives a quick result test.
However, since the early days of the pandemic, experts have questioned the White House health and safety protocols and asked why more was not being done to protect the commander-in-chief. Trump continued to shake hands with visitors long after public health officials warned him against him and initially resisted being examined. He has been reluctant to practice his own administration’s social distancing guidelines for fear of appearing weak, even refusing in almost all circumstances to wear a mask in public.
Trump is not the only major world leader known to have contracted the virus. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson spent a week in hospital, including three nights in intensive care, where he was administered oxygen and monitored 24 hours a day by medical workers. German Chancellor Angela Merkel self-isolated after a doctor who gave her a vaccine tested positive for the virus, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau worked from home after his wife fell ill.
The White House had its first Covid-19 scare in early March when at least three people who later tested positive approached the president at his private Florida club. That included members of the Brazilian president’s delegation, including the Brazilian charge d’affaires, who sat at Trump’s dinner table.
In mid-March, as the virus continued to spread across the country, the White House began taking the temperature of everyone entering the White House compound, and in April began administering rapid tests for Covid-19. to everyone near the complex. President, with the staff examined once a week. Frequent testing gave some staff members the false impression that the complex was safe from the virus and, as a result, few followed recommended safety protocols, including wearing masks.
But then the bubble burst.
On May 7, the White House announced that a member of the military serving as one of the president’s personal aides tested positive for the virus, followed a day later by a positive diagnosis from Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary.
Even then, Trump said he was “not concerned” about the spread of the virus in the White House. But officials again stepped up the complex’s security protocols, ordering everyone entering the west wing to wear a mask.
“I think it’s very well contained, actually,” Trump told reporters on May 11.
But by June, concerns at the White House had once again dissipated, with few employees bothering with masks even as more and more people tested positive for the virus, including members of campaign staff preparing for a rally in Tulsa and Secret Service agents.
On July 3, Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is dating Trump’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr., tested positive in South Dakota ahead of an Independence Day fireworks display at Mount Rushmore. Guilfoyle, a former Fox News personality working for the Trump campaign, had not flown Air Force One and had not been in direct contact with the president, although he had had contact with numerous senior Republican officials.
In July, Trump’s national security adviser Robert O’Brien tested positive.
While there is no evidence that Trump is seriously ill, the positive test also raises questions about what would happen if he became incapacitated due to illness. Amendment 25 to the Constitution details the procedures under which a president may declare himself “incapable of fulfilling the powers and duties” of the presidency. If he made that call, Trump would transmit a written note to the president of the Senate pro tempore, Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California. Pence would serve as interim president until Trump issued “a written statement to the contrary.”
The Vice President and the majority of the Cabinet or other body established by law may also declare the President incapable of fulfilling the powers and duties of his office, in which case Pence “shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Interim President” until Trump may provide a written statement to the contrary.
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