President Trump tests positive for the coronavirus

More than 20 people in and around the White House have tested positive for the coronavirus in recent weeks — including President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump, and their son, Barron Trump.

The president announced on October 2 that he and Melania Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, joining several other high-ranking US government officials who have contracted SARS-CoV-2. Trump was given an experimental antibody treatment and oxygen at the White House, before being moved to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland for three days.

President Donald Trump is rushing to get back on the campaign trail just one week after leaving the hospital, and before it’s even clear that he’s tested negative for the coronavirus. (Minutes before this story was published, Trump’s physician released a letter claiming that Trump “has tested NEGATIVE, on consecutive days, using the Abbott BinaxNOW antigen card.”)

With polling showing the presidential race trending toward a Biden landslide, Trump is scheduled to hold a rally on Monday evening in Sanford, Florida. It will be his first since a trip to Minnesota on September 30 during which White House aide Hope Hicks fell ill with Covid-19, and marks the beginning of what is shaping up to be an extraordinarily intense three weeks of campaigning for the president. Trump has reportedly asked his campaign to schedule in-person events for him every night between Monday and Election Day. One adviser expressed worry to Axios that Trump is “going to kill himself.”

Since news broke that President Donald Trump, several of his staffers, and three Republican senators have tested positive for the coronavirus, people have been poring over pictures and video of Trump at various events, marveling at the lack of precautions.

But which Trump moment was the worst offender for coronavirus exposure? The massive Rose Garden ceremony announcing his nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court? The debate at the Cleveland Clinic where his family members and aides refused to abide by mask-wearing guidelines? The limo ride outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to wave at his supporters outside the hospital?

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top military advisers to the president, are heading into quarantine after a top Coast Guard official tested positive for the coronavirus.

The vice commandant of the US Coast Guard, Adm. Charles Ray, tested positive for the virus on Monday. Defense Department officials now say the chair and vice chair, along with the military heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, Space Force, and US Cyber Command will isolate “out of an abundance of caution” after attending sensitive Pentagon meetings with Ray. (The Marine Corps commandant wasn’t in these meetings.)

On Monday, we learned White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tested positive for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. McEnany — and others in the White House cluster — failed to follow public health guidelines and quarantine, though she had been exposed to colleagues confirmed to have Covid-19.

She also briefed reporters twice — on Friday and Sunday — without wearing a mask, putting them at risk of the virus.

Tracing the close contacts of people known to be infected with Covid-19 is a basic strategy in the fight against the pandemic — something that’s supposed to be a given, and has helped countries like Germany and South Korea gradually open up again.

But after President Donald Trump tested positive for the coronavirus, the White House and his administration don’t seem to have done much, if any, contact tracing for the Covid-19 cluster surrounding the president.

While a lot of attention is currently going to President Donald Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis, experts warn that the rest of the country should prepare for a potential coronavirus surge in the coming weeks and months of fall and winter.

The surge of Covid-19 cases and deaths in America over the summer resulted from a toxic mix of factors: states reopening, lockdown fatigue, and a season typically filled with vacations and holidays like Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. People gathered and celebrated indoors — at bars, restaurants, and friends’ and family’s homes. Millions of people got sick, and tens of thousands died.

When an older man tests positive for a pathogen that can kill him, is it wrong to feel gleeful about it? Ordinarily, we’d probably all agree the answer is yes.

But what happens when that older man is President Trump, and the lethal pathogen is one he’s spent months downplaying, to the detriment of hundreds of thousands of Americans who’ve gotten sick or died from Covid-19 under his leadership? What happens when he’s exposed several of his own staff members and supporters to the virus, after hosting a White House reception that now looks like it may have been a superspreader event?

President Donald Trump will stay at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for a “few days,” according to White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, “out of an abundance of caution.” He traveled to the facility Friday afternoon, less than 24 hours after he tested positive for the coronavirus.

“President Trump remains in good spirits, has mild symptoms, and has been working throughout the day,” McEnany said in a statement on Friday. “Out of an abundance of caution, and at the recommendation of his physician and medical experts, the President will be working from the presidential offices at Walter Reed for the next few days. President Trump appreciates the outpouring of support for both he and the First Lady.”

Ever since President Donald Trump announced he and the first lady tested positive for the coronavirus early Friday morning, statements ranging from the heartfelt to the grotesque have poured in from world leaders — some even via telegram.

Some messages featured curiously similar language, with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson — who himself contracted the virus earlier this year — offering their best wishes for a “full” or “speedy recovery” to the First Couple.

President Donald Trump has received an unproven antibody treatment for Covid-19 following a test confirming that he was infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, White House physician Sean Conley said in a letter Friday afternoon.

The treatment was developed by the biotech company Regeneron. “Following PCR confirmation of the president’s diagnosis, as a precautionary measure he received a single 8 gram dose of Regeneron’s polyclonal antibody cocktail,” Conley wrote.

The final month of the 2020 presidential campaign has been thrown into a massive amount of uncertainty as President Donald Trump announced Friday that he has tested positive for the coronavirus.

America’s Covid-19 crisis has already affected the election in tangible ways, with a huge surge of mail-in ballot requests and early voting in multiple states. Now, the coronavirus has reached one of the candidates. Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden are both in their 70s and therefore at higher risk for more severe Covid-19 symptoms. Biden has tested negative for Covid-19, according to a statement from his doctor released on Friday.

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.

While Trump has a number of risk factors for a severe case of the disease, one advantage he does have is that his infection was caught fairly early, before any severe symptoms arose. That’s because the White House is able to conduct regular and rapid tests, something that is still out of reach for many workplaces across the United States even as they reopen.

What happens if the president of the United States becomes too sick to do the job?

It’s a question that’s arisen several times in American history, and may be newly relevant now that President Donald Trump has tested positive for the coronavirus.

There appears to be a Covid-19 cluster mushrooming inside the White House and beyond. President Donald Trump has tested positive for the coronavirus, as have first lady Melania Trump and White House adviser Hope Hicks. In the days ahead, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told reporters Friday, he expects more administration staff to test positive. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who attended a White House function on Saturday, also announced a positive test, as did several other attendees.

An obvious question: How did this happen? Didn’t the White House have protocols in place to protect the president, his family, and his closest advisers (not to mention the supporters and political allies he was around during campaign events)?

The most powerful leader in the world has tested positive for the coronavirus.

President Donald Trump confirmed his diagnosis in a tweet early Friday, joining a growing list of world leaders who’ve contracted the virus. That list includes leaders who’ve downplayed or mishandled the pandemic at points, including Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

In the wake of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis, Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham announced that he won’t be changing his plans for the Supreme Court confirmation process at this point.

The confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett was set to begin in a little over a week, on Monday, October 12. Friday’s news prompted questions about whether this schedule would shift, given concerns about senators’ exposure to coronavirus and their ability to fully participate in the process.

Donald Trump is a liar.

Before he became president, Trump lied about everything from his personal wealth to his TV ratings to the number of floors in his condo towers. Once in the White House, he started out lying about the size of his inauguration crowd, and super-sized his lies from there.

After testing positive for the coronavirus, President Donald Trump can rest assured he will receive the best medical care without having to worry about the cost.

But many Americans already do not have the same guarantee of quality in care and coverage that the president enjoys. And if Republican states supported by the Trump administration succeed at the Supreme Court in overturning the Affordable Care Act, tens of millions of people could lose access to health care.

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump have tested positive for Covid-19, and both are reportedly experiencing mild symptoms of the disease — a development with huge but unclear ramifications for the presidential race and for the United States’ ongoing, deadly coronavirus pandemic.

“Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!” the president tweeted early Friday.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, have both tested negative for the coronavirus, his campaign has confirmed.

There were fears Biden had been exposed to the coronavirus at Tuesday’s presidential debate in Cleveland, when he appeared onstage with President Donald Trump. Trump and first lady Melania Trump have both tested positive for the coronavirus, the president announced in a tweet early Friday morning. While it sometimes takes several days for a person to test positive after contracting the virus, the Bidens have initially tested negative.

Now that President Trump has contracted the coronavirus, the White House is at pains to assure the public he is receiving top-notch medical care and the entire team is following best practices. Realistically, however, the president has spent the past several months thumbing his nose at public health guidelines and even going so far as to mock his opponents for following them.

As recently as Tuesday’s presidential debate, for example, Trump mocked Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for his heavy mask usage, saying, “I don’t wear masks like him. Every time you see him, he’s got a mask,” and that Biden “could be speaking 200 feet away” and then “shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.”