Ben Carson tests positive for virus
Heist he 2nd attendee of the Trump campaign’ s scrutinized election night watch party to contract COVID -19.
WASHINGTON — It was supposed to be a scene of celebration.
Instead, the Trump campaign’s election night watch party in the White House East Room — with few masks and no social distancing — is being eyed as a potential coronavirus super spreading event.
Ben Carson, the secretary for Housing and Urban Development, is the latest attendee to test positive, a department spokesman confirmed.
The event has been under scrutiny since another attendee, the president’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, contracted the virus, which has now killed more than 237,000 people in the U.S. alone.
Carson’s deputy chief of staff Coalter Baker said the secretary “is in good spirits” and “feels fortunate to have access to effective therapeutics which aid and markedly speed his recovery.” Carson is a retired neurosurgeon.
The White House has repeatedly refused to say who else has tested positive, even as the virus continues to spread.
The latest White House coronavirus cluster, coming just a month after President Donald Trump’s own diagnosis and hospitalization, includes a top Trump campaign official as well as a handful of undisclosed White House staff, officials said.
The White House has been increasingly secretive about outbreaks.
Many White House and Trump campaign officials, as well as those who attended the election watch party, were kept in the dark about the diagnoses, unaware until they were disclosed by the press.
Thatthe virus would continue to spread in the White
House— even though senior staff and those who come into close contact with the president and vice president are frequently tested — has come as no surprise to public health officials who have balked at the White House’s lax approach.
“The administration was cavalier about the risks of the virus for themselves and for the country. And that’s one reason why we have so many cases,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a public health professor at Johns Hopkins University’s school of public health.
During the evening East Room event Nov. 3, more than 100 of Trump’s most loyal supporters, family members and Cabinet secretaries gathered to watch the election results come in and see him deliver what they had hoped would be a victory speech.
While everyone who attended the East Room event had been tested in advance for the virus, there was no social distancing and minimal mask-wearing.