US President Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, tested positive for COVID-19 earlier this week and is isolating, three people familiar with the matter said.
A spokesman for Trump Jr said in a statement that he is asymptomatic.
Trump Jr adds to the dozens of people associated with the US president who have been infected by the novel coronavirus, including Trump himself.
Photo: EPA-EFE
On Friday, Rudy Giuliani’s son, Andrew Giuliani, who is a White House aide, announced on Twitter that he had tested positive.
In addition, an aide to US Vice President Mike Pence, Hannah MacInnis, tested positive earlier this month, two people familiar with the matter said.
Several of Pence’s aides have been infected, including his communications director, who had previously been his press secretary, and his chief of staff. Pence himself has not.
Andrew Giuliani on Thursday attended a news conference his father hosted where he and other Trump-allied lawyers repeated unsubstantiated claims that voter fraud had led to the US president’s defeat for re-election.
One of the lawyers, Jenna Ellis, on Friday said on Twitter that she and Rudy Giuliani had tested negative for infection.
The COVID-19 pandemic is surging around the country, with new cases regularly topping 150,000 per day since last week.
More than 254,000 Americans have died from the novel coronavirus since February. Trump’s handling of the pandemic helped cost him the White House.
Earlier this month, in the days after the US presidential election, Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, told associates that he had COVID-19.
It was not immediately clear when Meadows learned that he had contracted the virus or whether he had developed symptoms.
Bloomberg News previously reported that a number of others who attended a Nov. 3 election party at the White House — including US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson and Trump campaign adviser David Bossie — also contracted the virus.
Others in the president’s orbit, such as long-time adviser Corey Lewandowski and Republican lobbyist Jeff Miller, tested positive for the virus, in the days after the party as well.
About 200 people attended the party, mingling in close quarters largely without masks.
However, it is not certain whether those who attended the party contracted the virus at the event.
More than four dozen people associated with Trump or the White House have been infected by the virus, including the president, his wife, Melania, and his youngest son, Barron.
On Thursday, the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force, led by Pence, briefed reporters at the White House for the first time since April, after the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended earlier that Americans cancel Thanksgiving travel plans.
Pence and members of the task force touted progress in the development of potential vaccines.
He also said the Trump administration does not support another national lockdown.
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