Hotel disputes conservative lobbyist Matt Schlapp’s claim of coronavirus ‘screening’ at CPAC site

Ian Walters, spokesman for the American Conservative Union, told CNBC on Tuesday that the group’s executive director, Dan Schneider, spoke on Sunday with a Maryland health official who told Schneider that 2,000 screenings for coronavirus had been done at the hotel.

Walters said that Schneider’s understanding was that the screenings were of people, and that the screenings involved, at the very least, people being questioned about their current health.

But Walters said, based on his own conversations Wednesday with the media office for the Maryland Health Department, “I don’t think screening is the right term.”

“It’s more of an assessment than a formal screening, an assesment or an evaluation,” Walters said.

A spokesman for the Maryland Health Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

A spokesman for the Prince George’s County Health Department also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A press release on the county’s website issued Sunday said that the county, “along with the Maryland Department of Health, recommends members of the public who attended or worked” at CPAC “monitor themselves for symptoms of a respiratory infection including fever, cold-like symptoms, cough, difficulty breathing or shortness of breath.”

The release does not mention any screenings or assessments of members of the public or workers at the Gaylord for coronavirus.

Residents who attended or worked this event should check their temperature twice a day and notify their health care provider and our Health Department if their temperature exceeds 100.4 or if they develop a respiratory illness,” the release says. “They should remain at home until they receive instructions about next steps from their health care provider or local health department.”

The American Conservative Union has been criticized in recent days for how it dealt with learning that a CPAC attendee tested positive for coronavirus.

An article on Monday in Politico noted that “The ACU’s handling of the case has led to grumbling from some conference goers, who have complained of a two-tiered system: VIPs have been notified directly even to be told they did not interact with the infected man, while ordinary rank-and-file attendees have by and large been left to wonder, receiving only vaguer information in mass emails.”

“Meanwhile, critics have noted the irony of prominent officials downplaying the outbreak even as the disease may silently have been spreading among the Trump administration’s own members and supporters,” the Politico article said.

Trump’s incoming chief of staff, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-NC, as well as Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., have self-quarantined because of their contact with the infected man at CPAC.

So have two other GOP House members, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Doug Collins of Georgia, who had contact with Trump before they were informed they had been in contact with the infected man. Gaetz was on a flight from Florida on Air Force One with Trump on Monday when he learned he had contact with the man at CPAC.

The man diagnosed with coronavirus has not been identified publicly. 

However, a spokeswoman for New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy confirmed to CNBC on Tuesday that a 55-year-old man from Englewood, N.J., who had tested positively presumptively for coronavirus, had attended CPAC, and that the man was symptomatic as of Feb. 27, while the conference was still ongoing. That man was in a local New Jersey hospital, according to state officials.

The spokeswoman also confirmed that the same man had apparently attended Temple Young Israel in New Rochelle, N.Y.

That temple is the same one attended by a lawyer in New Rochelle, who is known to have contracted coronavirus.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday deployed the National Guard to New Rochelle, to contain a one-mile radius around the temple that is believed to be a connective point of many of the 108 cases of coronavirus identified in Westchester County.

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/11/coronavirus-controversy-over-matt-schlapp-claim-about-cpac-screening.html