US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump tested positive for Covid-19 and will go into quarantine immediately, the president tweeted late Thursday.
“Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19,” Trump said in the tweet, less than two hours after posting that his close aide Hope Hicks had tested positive
“We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!”
The tweet raised immediate concerns about the health of the president, who is more than 70 years of age and obese.Trump had earlier in the evening tweeted he and the first lady began “our quarantine process” after one of his closest advisers, Hope Hicks, who had travelled with him several times in the last few days, tested positive
“Hope Hicks, who has been working so hard without even taking a small break, has just tested positive for Covid 19,” President Trump tweeted. “Terrible! The First Lady and I are waiting for our test results. In the meantime, we will begin our quarantine process!”
Hicks had travelled with Trump and his team on Air Force One to Cleveland, Ohio for the first presidential debate. She also travelled with Trump to his rally in Duluth, Minnesota, on Wednesday and was seen in close contact with senior members of the president’s campaign.
According to rules made by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), people who were in close contact with Hicks should quarantine themselves. That would include the president, the first lady and senior members of the president’s re-election campaign
Bloomberg, which first reported Hicks testing positive, said she had felt ill in Minnesota and quarantined herself on the way back on the presidential aircraft.
“The president takes the health and safety of himself and everyone who works in support of him and the American people very seriously,” White House spokesman Judd Deere has said in a statement.
“White House Operations collaborates with the physician to the president and the White House Military Office to ensure all plans and procedures incorporate current CDC
guidance and best practices for limiting Covid-19 exposure to the greatest extent possible, both on complex and when the president is travelling.”
Hicks is the fourth White House personnel to test positive for Coronavirus, after a personal military valet of the president, a member of the vice-president’s staff and the National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien. But Hicks has been the closest of them all to the president, who had gone on a 10-day course of Hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug
More than 207,000 Americans have been killed by Covid-19 and millions have been infected. President Trump has refused a responsibility for them, and has been blamed for his botched response to the pandemic, despite his fervent claims to the contrary, citing travel shut-downs.
More egregious has been his open scepticism of the use of face masks and social distancing norms. He rarely wears one himself despite professing his complete endorsement of masks.