Aides test positive as Covid breaches White House walls
WASHINGTON: The US vice-president’s spokeswoman became another White House staffer this week to test positive for the coronavirus, officials said on Friday, even as President Donald Trump continued to go mask-free at a World War II commemoration with veterans in their 90s.
News that staffer Katie Miller had fallen ill was followed by reports that Ivanka Trump’s aide has also tested positive. These two positive cases were preceded by news of a valet of the US president testing positive.
Miller is spokeswoman for vice-president Mike Pence, giving her frequent access to highlevel meetings. She is also married to top Trump aide Stephen Miller, the speech writer behind the administration’s hardline immigration measures.
Also, Ivanka Trump’s personal assistant tested positive for the deadly coronavirus, making her the third White House staff member to be infected, a media report said on Saturday.
The assistant, who works in a personal capacity for Donald Trump’s daughter, has not been around her in several weeks, CNN reported. She was not symptomatic. Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner both tested negative on Friday.
A senior administration official initially said only that a member of Pence’s staff was tested and found to have the virus.
Trump, speaking at an event with Republican lawmakers, identified the person as Miller, saying she works with Pence as a “press person”. This confirmed US media reports that Katie Miller was the person in question.
On Friday, Miller thanked people for their well wishes, and in a tweet said, “I’m doing well and look forward to getting back to work for the American people.”
As recently as Thursday, Miller was seen mingling with senior officials at an outdoor prayer ceremony that was hosted by President Trump and attended by dozens of people, including the wives of Trump and Pence and many senior staff.
Miller’s positive test disrupted a trip by Pence to Des Moines, Iowa, with six people who may have had contact with her made to get off the airplane.
On Thursday, a Trump spokesman said the US president’s valet, a member of the military who is in close contact with the president, had tested positive. Trump and Pence were tested and confirmed to be negative. Both are tested daily.
Meanwhile, the US government tightened visa rules for Chinese journalists on Friday in the latest retaliatory measure in an ongoing spat between the two countries. The regulation will limit visas for Chinese journalists to a 90-day period, while allowing them to apply for extensions.
LONDON/HONGKONG: A triple drug combination of antiviral medicines helped relieve symptoms in patients with mild to moderate Covid-19 infection and swiftly reduced the amount of virus in their bodies, according to results of a small trial in Hong Kong.
The trial, which involved 127 patients, compared those given the combination drug - made up of the HIV medicine lopinavir– ritonavir, the hepatitis drug ribavirin, and the multiple sclerosis treatment interferon beta - with a control group given just the HIV drug.
The findings, published in the Lancet medical journal, showed that on average, people who got the triple drug reached the point of no detectable virus five days earlier than those in the control group - at 7 days versus 12 days.
“Our trial demonstrates that early treatment of mild to moderate Covid-19 with a triple combination of antiviral drugs may rapidly suppress the amount of virus in a patient’s body, relieve symptoms, and reduce the risk to health-care workers,” said Kwok-yung Yuen, a professor at the University of Hong Kong who co-led the research.
He said t he l ower ri sk t o health workers would be due to the combination drug’s effect in reducing “viral shedding” - which is when the virus is detectable and potentially transmissible.
I n t he t r i al , al l pati e nts received standard hospital care as needed, including ventilation support, dialysis support, antibiotics and corticosteroids.
Kowk-yung said the findings were “encouraging”, but that the triple drug’s effect now needed to be tested in larger numbers of patients and in people with more severe Covid-19 illness.
Independent experts agreed that the findings were positive. “This definitely justifies the consideration of adding interferon beta to the list of genuinely, evidence-based, promising treatments to be tested in further randomised trials,” said Stephen Evans, a professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.