President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump have tested positive for the coronavirus.
The president announced the diagnosis in a tweet.
The president tested positive for COVID-19 while working on plans to reopen the country despite the risks of cases soaring again.
Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2020
This news comes just days after one of his closest advisers Hope Hicks who also had COVID-19 travelled with him aboard Air Force One for his campaign tour.
In a statement dated Oct. 1, 2020, the President’s personal physician Dr. Sean Conley 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.”
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 recently 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.
“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 on-going 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.
