Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary tests positive for coronavirus

WASHINGTON — Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary, Katie Miller, has tested positive for coronavirus, Miller confirmed to NBC News on Friday.

President Donald Trump said earlier Friday that a “press person” named Katie was the Pence aide who tested positive. Earlier this year, Miller married senior Trump White House adviser Stephen Miller. Miller said she is asymptomatic, and that she tested negative a day before testing positive Friday, NBC reported.

Miller was at the White House on Friday morning before her positive result came in, a White House official told NBC. The official told NBC that Miller was showing “symptoms” while she was there.

Miller, who had handled communications for the coronavirus task force, did not respond to multiple requests for comment from CNBC.

Trump’s physician and White House staff “continue to work closely to ensure every precaution is taken to keep the President, First Family and the entire White House Complex safe and healthy at all times,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement.

“In addition to social distancing, daily temperature checks and symptom histories, hand sanitizer, and regular deep cleaning of all work spaces, every staff member in close proximity to the president and vice president is being tested daily for COVID-19 as well as any guests,” Deere said.

On Thursday, news broke that Trump’s personal valet has also tested positive.

Pence was scheduled to travel to Des Moines, Iowa, in the morning, but his departure from Andrews Air Force Base was delayed by nearly an hour as staff dealt with news of the diagnosis. Reporters traveling with Pence said several staffers disembarked from Air Force Two just before takeoff.

Those staffers left the plane because they had been in contact with the staffer who tested positive, NBC News reported. In response to the positive test, the White House medical office has embarked on a program of contact tracing for the individual, an official told NBC. Some of these staffers have already been retested.

As of Friday, more than 75,000 Americans have died of Covid-19, and more than 1.2 million have tested positive. 

Yet Pence and Trump by and large refuse to wear masks, despite a recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that face coverings be used to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus. 

Trump has never been inclined to wear a mask. Moments after the CDC issued its initial guidance on masks in April, the president said, “I don’t think that I’m going to be doing it.”

This has not changed, even with news of his valet’s positive test. On Friday Trump attended an event to mark the anniversary of VE Day, and neither he nor first lady Melania Trump wore a mask. 

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/08/vice-president-mike-pence-staffer-tests-positive-for-coronavirus.html