Diagnosis set to upend campaign
WASHINGTON: The announcement yesterday that US President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, have Covid19 amounts to more than just another bombshell in a country now accustomed to chaos in its politics.
It is almost certain to affect the president’s ability to hit the campaign trail in the coming weeks, thrusting the pandemic — and Trump’s handling of it — back to the forefront of the campaign and the country’s consciousness. Shortly after Trump’s shocking tweet, the White House appeared to cancel today’s rally in Orlando, Florida, removing it from an updated schedule.
More immediately, the health scare for Trump, who at 74 is at higher risk of serious complications from the virus, amounts to the most serious known health crisis faced by any sitting president in recent American history.
Trump, who has been less than fully transparent about his health and never explained last year’s emergency trip to Walter Reed Medical Centre, weighs 110.8kg.
Dr Bob Lahita, of St Joseph University Hospital, told Fox News that Covid19 patients older than 70, though at higher risk from the virus, still stood a 96% chance of surviving the disease. But he noted that obesity and hypertension could elevate the risk.
The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention say people aged 65 to 74 have a risk of hospital admission with coronavirus five times higher than those aged 18 to 29, and a 90% higher risk of death.
In England in July, Public
Health England published a review that found a dramatic rise in the risk of hospital admission and death for people who are overweight or obese.
Trump’s positive test came just hours after the White House announced that senior aide Hope Hicks, one of the president’s closest advisers, had tested positive yesterday after several days of travelling with him.
The diagnosis laid bare the fallacy of Trump’s repeated claims that experts’ public health warnings were overly alarmist and the pandemic itself was nearly over.
Just hours before he announced his positive test result, in a prerecorded message to the New York Archdiocese’s Al Smith dinner, Trump claimed that ‘‘the end of the coronavirus pandemic is in sight’’.
Trump, who trails Democratic nominee Joe Biden in national and swing state polls as early voting in several states is already under way, was scheduled to campaign next week in Arizona and Nevada and to appear at two fundraisers in Los Angeles and Orange County, but the threeday
Western swing could now be in jeopardy.
And his positive test could force several senior campaign and White House aides into quarantine with just a month left before the election. None of the president’s guests at Wednesday’s presidential debate in Cleveland, most of whom travelled with him on Air Force One, were wearing masks in the debate hall. Among them were Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Senator Marsha Blackburn (RTenn), Representative Jim Jordan (ROhio), Tiffany and Lara Trump, Kim Guilfoyle, Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump and the First Lady.
Since the coronavirus emerged in March, the president, the White House and his campaign have played down the threat and refused to abide by basic public health guidelines such as wearing masks in public and practising social distancing. Instead, Trump has continued to hold campaign rallies that draw thousands of supporters. The virus has killed more than 207,000 Americans and infected more than 7 million nationwide.