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WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will depart for Japan on Sunday (October 4), but will not go to Mongolia and South Korea as originally scheduled, the State Department said on Saturday, after the President Donald Trump was diagnosed and hospitalized due to COVID. 19.
Initially, Pompeo planned to visit all three countries between October 4-8.
He is still set to depart for Tokyo on Sunday, but will return to Washington on October 6 after consulting with his Japanese counterparts and attending a broader meeting with the foreign ministers of India and Australia.
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Trump announced his illness in the early hours of Friday and was airlifted from the White House to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center near Washington. In a video from the hospital on Saturday, he said he was feeling “much better” but that the next few days will be “the real test” of his treatment for COVID-19.
In a speech delivered almost earlier to the Florida Family Policy Council, Pompeo said he was in good health but canceled his appearance in person at the event “out of caution.” He said he still planned to go to Asia.
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“You should know that I feel good, I am doing very well. I have had two tests done in two days. I am as healthy as I have been. And I still have the intention: I have a trip that I am planning to travel to Asia tomorrow,” he said. .
In a statement, the State Department said Pompeo hoped to travel to Asia again in October and would work to reschedule visits on his original itinerary.
Pompeo’s visit to East Asia, the first to the region in more than a year, comes at a time when America’s ties with Beijing are at their worst in decades. Aside from Trump, the coronavirus has infected his wife Melania and several Republican senators, as well as millions of other Americans.
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