A top aide to US Vice-President Mike Pence has tested positive for Covid-19 one day after another White House staff member was diagnosed with the virus.
Mr Pence’s press secretary Katie Miller tested positive on Friday, a day after President Donald Trump’s valet.
The White House has begun daily testing for Mr Pence and Mr Trump, and has claimed to be taking “every single precaution to protect the president”.
The US death toll is now over 76,000 and states are beginning to reopen.
Six members of Mr Pence’s team were abruptly taken off his plane, Air Force 2, after it was held on the tarmac outside Washington, DC for over an hour on Friday, as he prepared to travel to Iowa to meet religious leaders.
The staff members had had recent contact with Mrs Miller, according to an unnamed US official cited in the media pool report. The president and vice-president had not.
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During a meeting with Republicans at the White House, Mr Trump told reporters: “She’s a wonderful young woman, Katie.”
“She tested very good for a long period of time and then all of a sudden today she tested positive.”
When asked about the possibility of an outbreak in the White House, Mr Trump told reporters: “All you can do is take precautions and do the best you can.”
He also said he was correct not to wear a mask while visiting the World War II memorial in Washington for VE Day, because the elderly veterans there with him were “far away”.
“Plus the wind was blowing so hard and such a direction that if the plague ever reached them, I’d be very surprised,” he added.
US President Donald Trump has confirmed the White House coronavirus task force will be winding down, with Vice-President Mike Pence suggesting it could be disbanded within weeks.
“We are bringing our country back,” Mr Trump said during a visit to a mask-manufacturing factory in Arizona.
New confirmed infections per day in the US currently top 20,000, and daily deaths exceed 1,000.
US health officials warn the virus may spread as businesses begin to reopen.
The US currently has 1.2 million confirmed coronavirus infections and more than 70,000 related deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, which is tracking the pandemic.
What did President Trump say?
During a visit to the plant in Phoenix after weeks holed up at the White House, Mr Trump told journalists: “Mike Pence and the task force have done a great job, but we’re now looking at a little bit of a different form, and that form is safety and opening. And we’ll have a different group probably set up for that.”
The president – who wore safety goggles but no face mask during his tour of the facility – was asked if it was “mission accomplished”, and he said: “No, not at all. The mission accomplished is when it’s over.”
Critics have accused the president of sacrificing Americans’ public health in his eagerness to reopen the US economy ahead of his re-election battle in November.
In Arizona on Tuesday, Mr Trump said that Democrats were hoping his coronavirus policy would fail “so they can win the election”.
Acknowledging a human cost to the plans, Mr Trump told reporters: “I’m not saying anything is perfect, and yes, will some people be affected? Yes.
“Will some people be affected badly? Yes. But we have to get our country open and we have to get it open soon.”
However, it will be up to individual states to determine how they reopen.
Some Democratic governors in badly hit states have been cautious, calling for more testing and other safeguards before easing lockdowns. Other states, many led by Republicans in the south and mid-west, have already begun lifting restrictions.
The task force was set up on 29 January. Mr Pence became its chairman four weeks later and its members include more than 20 experts and leading administration officials. The White House said the task force’s duty was to “lead the administration’s efforts to monitor, contain and mitigate the spread of the virus” and provide the public with information.
Mr Trump’s once-daily task force briefings became increasingly scarce after he was widely condemned by the medical community for pondering at the podium last month whether injecting bleach into people might kill the virus.
Dr Deborah Birx has been the task force’s response co-ordinator. The president was asked on Tuesday whether she and another high-profile member, Dr Anthony Fauci, would still be involved in efforts to address the coronavirus.
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“They will be and so will other doctors and so will other experts in the field,” the president said.
What did the vice-president say?
Mr Pence earlier on Tuesday told reporters in a briefing that the task force could soon be disbanded.
He said the Trump administration was “starting to look at the Memorial Day [late May] window, early June window as a time when we could begin to transition back to having our agencies begin to manage, begin to manage our national response in a more traditional manner”.
He said it was “a reflection of the tremendous progress we’ve made as a country”.
Mr Pence has led the task force, which reports to the president and co-ordinates with medical institutes, political staff and state governors. The group also consulted medical experts to formulate national guidelines on social distancing.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany later tweeted that the president “will continue his data-driven approach towards safely re-opening”.
Lives and livelihoods
The White House’s shift in focus from the public health aspect of the coronavirus pandemic to its economic impact continues.
For more than a month, the task force had been the public face of the administration’s response to the crisis, even though President Trump sometimes veered far from the topic at hand during its press briefings.
When the president wasn’t talking, however, government public health officials led the conversation.
Now, it appears, the officials setting the agenda will be ones more concerned with jobs, businesses and the fiscal health of the nation – even though the number of cases of the virus throughout the US continues to increase.
There is growing frustration among the president’s core supporters, however, with government shelter-in-place orders. Several states, encouraged by the president, have already begun to ease restrictions, even though they have not met White House guidelines for when to do so.
Those recommendations were set by the current coronavirus task force, of course. And the “different group” in a “different form” that replaces it, as the president describes, may have other ideas.
When Vice President Mike Pence walked into the Mayo Clinic on Tuesday, he wasn’t wearing a face mask.
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Everyone else in the building was, according to reporters who were traveling with him. After all, it has been the policy at the renowned Rochester, Minnesota, facility since April 13. They even say they’ll provide one.
Pence was told of the new rules before he visited, the clinic said on Twitter, a post that was subsequently deleted.
“Mayo Clinic had informed @VP of the masking policy prior to his arrival today,” they had written.
But as he visited a blood and plasma donation center inside the building, Pence was bare-faced.
Others in the room — including Dr. Stephen Hahn, the Food and Drug Administration head — wore coverings.
The Mayo Clinic briefed Pence’s team in the last several days about the clinic’s policy requiring face masks, a person involved in planning the visit told CNN. The briefing came after the White House reached out last week about a potential visit. The person said when the clinic told the White House about the policy, it wasn’t clear whether Pence would wear a mask.
When Pence and the team, including reporters, arrived at the clinic, personnel from the facility had masks available for the group, including Pence. During the tour, the rest of the entourage wore masks except Pence.
Another source familiar with discussions said it is clear that — despite what the vice president said in defending himself and not wearing a mask — Pence’s staff understands now it was a mistake. News reports after the visit focused on whether he wore a mask instead of the work being done at the Mayo Clinic, and Pence’s staff believes they should have made sure he wore one to avoid such a news cycle, the source said.
Pence did avoid shaking hands; he elbow-bumped instead with doctors and officials.
But he was mask-less as he thanked workers, conferred with hospital administrators and spoke with a Mayo Clinic employee who was donating plasma after being diagnosed with Covid-19 at the end of March.
Afterward, Pence told reporters that he wasn’t wearing a mask because he’s often tested for coronavirus.
“As vice president of the United States I’m tested for the coronavirus on a regular basis, and everyone who is around me is tested for the coronavirus,” he said, citing guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that indicate wearing a mask can prevent those who have the virus from spreading it unwittingly.
“Since I don’t have the coronavirus, I thought it’d be a good opportunity for me to be here, to be able to speak to these researchers these incredible health care personnel and look them in the eye and say thank you,” he said.
In an update its website on April 13, the Mayo Clinic said it was requiring “all patients and visitors to wear a face covering or mask to help slow the spread of COVID-19.” It did not distinguish between visitors who had been tested for coronavirus and those who hadn’t.
“Patients and visitors are asked to bring their own face covering or mask to wear. If a patient or visitor does not have a mask, Mayo Clinic will provide one,” the website reads.
The guidance is based on recommendations from the Trump administration. The CDC recommended in early April that Americans consider wearing face coverings when in public to help prevent the virus spread from asymptomatic carriers. For roughly the past month, Pence has been getting tested weekly for the virus.
In announcing the new guidance, however, President Donald Trump repeatedly highlighted the recommendations weren’t mandatory. And he said he would not partake.
“I don’t think I’m going to be doing it,” he said, going on to suggest it was hard to envision such a thing in the Oval Office: “Wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens — I just don’t see it.”
After the Mayo Clinic deleted its tweet saying it had advised Pence of the mask policy, a new message appeared thanking him for visiting.
“We look forward to continued collaboration to develop essential testing and treatment for our patients and communities,” the new tweet read.
