4 Pence Aides Test Positive for the Coronavirus – The New York Times

Heres what you need to know:The vice presidents chief of staff, Marc Short, is one of at least four staff members who have tested positive for the coronavirus recently.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

At least three top aides to Vice President Mike Pence have tested positive for the coronavirus in the last few days, people briefed on the matter said. The test results raise fresh questions about the safety protocols at the White House, where masks are not routinely worn.

The vice presidents chief of staff, Marc Short, has tested positive, according to Devin OMalley, a spokesman for Mr. Pence, who leads the White House coronavirus task force. A person briefed on Mr. Shorts diagnosis said it was received on Saturday.

Vice President Pence and Mrs. Pence both tested negative for Covid-19 today, and remain in good health, Mr. OMalley said. While Vice President Pence is considered a close contact with Mr. Short, in consultation with the White House Medical Unit, the vice president will maintain his schedule in accordance with the C.D.C. guidelines for essential personnel.

The statement did not come from the White House medical unit, but instead from a press aide. Two people briefed on the matter said that the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, had sought to keep news of the outbreak from becoming public.

On Sunday, in an appearance on CNNs State of the Union, Mr. Meadows denied that he had tried to suppress news of the outbreak, saying he had acted out of concern about sharing personal information.

A Trump adviser briefed on the outbreak, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that the Pence adviser Marty Obst also tested positive this week. Mr. Obsts positive test was first reported by Bloomberg News.

Another person briefed on the developments, who also was not allowed to speak publicly, said that three additional Pence staff members had tested positive. Mr. OMalley did not immediately respond to a question about others who have tested positive.

Mr. Pences decision to continue campaigning, despite his proximity to his chief of staff, is certain to raise fresh questions about how seriously the White House is taking the risks to its staff members and to the public as the pandemic has killed nearly 225,000 people in the United States. The vice presidents office said that both Mr. and Mrs. Pence tested negative again on Sunday.

President Trump, the first lady and several aides and advisers tested positive for the virus roughly three weeks ago. Mr. Trump spent three nights at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and he was treated with an experimental antibody cocktail as well as the powerful steroid dexamethasone.

The administration decided not to trace the contacts of guests and staff members at the Rose Garden celebration on Sept. 26 for the Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, which also included a reception inside the White House. That event was linked to an outbreak that grew to more than 20 cases, as evidence mounted that the administration had done little to prevent or contain the viruss spread.

Mr. Trump, at rallies over the past two days, has insisted the country is rounding the turn on the virus, even though the single-day record for new cases was shattered on Friday. The United States has averaged more than 68,000 new cases a day over the last week, the countrys highest seven-day average of the pandemic.

Reports of new infections poured in at alarming levels on Saturday as the coronavirus continued to tear through the United States. Six states reported their highest-ever infection totals and more than 78,000 new cases had been announced by evening, one day after the country shattered its single-day record with more than 85,000 new cases.

The countrys case total on Saturday was the second highest in a single day. Case numbers on weekends are often lower because some states and counties do not report new data, so the high numbers on Saturday gave reason for alarm.

This is exploding all over the country, said Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, whose state is among 17 that have added more cases in the past week than in any other seven-day stretch. Weve got to tamp down these cases. The more cases, the more people that end up in the hospital and the more people die.

Officials in Alaska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico and Illinois announced more new cases on Saturday than on any other day of the pandemic. On Sunday, Alaska reported a record for the third straight day.

Rural areas and small metropolitan regions have seen some of the worst outbreaks in recent weeks, but by Saturday, many large cities were struggling as well.

The counties that include Chicago, Oklahoma City, Minneapolis, Anchorage and El Paso all set single-day records for new infections on Saturday. Across the country, hospitalizations have grown by about 40 percent since last month, and they continued to rise on Saturday. Around Chicago, where new restrictions on bars and other businesses took effect Friday, more than twice as many cases are now being identified each day than at the start of October.

This moment is a critical inflection point for Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has said.

States in the Midwest and Mountain West have been reporting some of the countrys most discouraging statistics, but worrisome upticks are occurring all over. New cases have emerged at or near record levels recently in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Arkansas and New Mexico.

Over the next week, two weeks, three weeks, please be extremely conservative in deciding how much time to spend outside of the home, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico said Friday as she imposed new restrictions on businesses. The visit to friends can wait its not worth your life, or theirs.

Experts worry that the growing numbers in need of hospital care will only get worse if cases continue to mount, especially in rural areas where medical facilities could be quickly overwhelmed.

The high case count in part reflects increased testing. With about one million people tested on many days, the country is getting a far more accurate picture of how widely the virus has spread than it did in the spring.

But public health officials warn that Americans are heading into a dangerous phase, as cooler weather forces people indoors, where the virus spreads easily. It could make for a grueling winter that tests the discipline of the many people who have grown weary of masks and of turning down invitations to see family and friends.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nations top infectious disease expert, said on Friday that the country should consider implementing a first-ever national mandate requiring masks, to help control a surge in coronavirus cases across the United States that has become the most severe to date.

Appearing on CNN, Dr. Fauci said that enforcing such a mandate would be difficult. But with conditions worsening across disparate regions of the country, he said he could be inclined to recommend the dramatic measure.

Theres going to be a difficulty enforcing it, he said, but if everyone agrees that this is something thats important and they mandate it and everybody pulls together and say, you know, were going to mandate it but lets just do it, I think that would be a great idea to have everybody do it uniformly.

Most states have imposed mask requirements to varying degrees, covering different spheres such as indoor and outdoor spaces at some point during the pandemic.

However, a minority of states, including Iowa, have resisted issuing directives on masks even as case counts have begun to climb to new highs. And even states and cities that have more restrictive orders in place tend to allow some exceptions, such as when people are exercising.

The White House has obstructed federal efforts that would have mandated masks in a more limited way, blocking an order drafted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month that would have required masks on public transportation.

But with more than a dozen states reporting more cases over the past week than in any other seven-day stretch during the pandemic, Dr. Fauci said that it may be necessary to have a more coordinated, national approach.

I get the argument saying, Well if you mandate a mask, then youre going to have to enforce it and thatll create more of a problem, he said. Well, if people are not wearing masks then maybe we should be mandating it.

Even as cases have risen to their highest levels yet in the United States, the White House Coronavirus Task Force has been meeting less frequently, Dr. Fauci said on Friday, appearing on MSNBC.

Recently, the group has been meeting weekly less frequent than the sometimes daily meetings during the early spring, he said.

The last time that President Trump was at one of the White House coronavirus task force meetings, which are now virtual, was several months ago, Dr. Fauci said, adding: Direct involvement with the president in discussions I have not done that in a while.

Vice President Mike Pence leads the task force, and relays guidance from the groups medical experts to the president, Dr. Fauci said.

U.S. Roundup

More than 800 North Dakotans who tested positive for the coronavirus have been belatedly notified after the state health department faced a backlog of cases, health officials said this week.

The backlog was caused by the sharp increase in cases in the state, the health department said in a statement. Members of the North Dakota National Guard who had been helping the states contact tracing efforts since early last month were reassigned to notify the people who tested positive, a health department spokeswoman said.

With 5,613 new cases in the state over the past week 737 cases per 100,000 people the state has the highest levels of infection per person in the country, according to a New York Times database. New York State had 56 cases per 100,000 people over the past week.

To address the backlog, contact tracers began calling people who tested positive, rather than their normal duties of calling those positive cases close contacts.

People who came in close contact with someone who tested positive will no longer be contacted by public health officials, the department said, except for people in health care, K-12 schools and universities.

Instead, people who test positive will be asked to self-notify their close contacts.

In other developments around the country:

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas asked the U.S. Health and Human Services Department on Saturday to authorize the use of an Army medical center on Fort Bliss for non-coronavirus patients in an effort to create more space for coronavirus patients at hospitals in the El Paso area.

A state of emergency issued in March by Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma was extended this week for another 30 days as the state faces record infection levels. As positive cases hit a new peak in the state, there have been an average of 1,312 new cases per day over the past week, an increase of 17 percent from the average two weeks earlier.

Warning signs flashed on Saturday that the pandemic has entered a dangerous phase across Europe, with several countries shattering daily infection records and uncertainty mounting about how the continent will battle its worst outbreak to date.

Deaths from the coronavirus in Germany surpassed 10,000 on Saturday, a disconcerting milestone in a country that has been widely admired for its ability to manage the pandemic. The number of new infections in a 24-hour period also reached a record level 14,714 although the countrys public health authority said that some of those cases should have been factored in earlier in the week but had not been because of technical issues.

Officials in Poland announced on Saturday that President Andrzej Duda had tested positive for the coronavirus at a time when the countrys de facto leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, was already in self-isolation after coming into contact with somebody earlier in the week who was infected.

The Belgian government, alarmed by the quickening pace of infections in the country of 11 million the second-worst in Europe behind the Czech Republic inched closer to a total lockdown with a spate of new restrictions on daily life. Officials moved up by two hours a curfew put in place last week, to 10 p.m. instead of midnight, for the next month, and required that all cultural and fitness venues such as gyms, pools, galleries and museums shut down. Commercial stores will be required to close at 8 p.m.

On Friday, several other countries, including France and Italy, recorded single-day records for new infections, according to data compiled by The New York Times. And the surge of new cases across the continent has pushed hospitalizations to alarming levels in countries such as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

France, after months of falling numbers of patients in intensive care, is now facing a frightening second wave. It has recorded over one million cases and set a single-day record Friday with 42,032 new cases. The government this week expanded its nightly curfew to 38 more regions and Polynesia.

The local health authorities in Germany, who are responsible for the contact tracing of infected people, said they were increasingly overwhelmed, despite help from hundreds of soldiers who have been dispatched to communities across the country. In Frankfurt, a city of about 750,000 that serves as Germanys banking capital, the number of new cases has quadrupled since the beginning of this month, and health officials there conceded that their ability to stop chains of infection had collapsed.

It is no longer possible to trace each case, the head of Frankfurts office of public health, Ren Gottschalk, told ZDF public television on Friday.

In Italy, which reported 19,143 new cases on Friday, officials are considering closing public gyms and swimming pools, according to a Reuters report. Bars and restaurants would be closed at 6 p.m. and people would be discouraged from traveling outside their local areas.

The coronavirus has made a routine trip to the gym feel like a health threat.

Many epidemiologists consider gyms to be among the highest-risk environments, and they were some of the last businesses to reopen in New York City in early September.

Now, gyms must comply with a long list of regulations. Checking in requires a health screening; masks are mandatory, even during the most strenuous workouts; only one-third of normal occupancy is allowed; and everyone must clean, then clean some more.

At a Planet Fitness in Brooklyn, Dinara Izmagambetova, who wore a floral face mask and had a sheen of sweat after completing a two-hour workout, said she was thrilled to be back in a gym. But safety measures had made it a less sociable experience, she said.

I could ask someone how to use a machine before the outbreak, Ms. Izmagambetova said. Now Im doing a lot of Googling.

But even as gyms have reopened, their future remains unclear. Some of them have had to shut down again after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo recently designated parts of Brooklyn and Queens coronavirus hot spots.

Despite scientists concerns, infection clusters connected to gyms in the United States have been relatively rare so far, though they have been reported in Hawaii and California.

Were not seeing outbreaks tied to gyms as heavily as something like a bar or school, said Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist at George Mason University in Virginia.

Still, a number of the 2,000 or so gyms in New York State and fitness centers across the country face a fight for life. At least one-fourth of the more than 40,000 gyms in the United States could close by the end of the year, according to the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association, an industry group. A study by Yelp said that more than 2,600 already had.

As Colorado fights a spate of late-season wildfires, with residents hoping that a predicted blizzard on Sunday will finally bring things under control, the states governor is warning that the thick smoke spreading across mountain towns could hide coronavirus outbreaks.

We do worry that the impact on respiratory conditions of the fires could mask the spread of Covid, Gov. Jared Polis said at a news conference this week, asking residents to please consider getting tested if they have a cough or sore throat.

Crews in northern Colorado have spent several grueling days battling the East Troublesome fire amid 60-mile-an-hour wind gusts. Firefighters are struggling to control the 188,000-acre wildfire, which has destroyed an unknown number of homes while roaring through ranches, lakeside resorts and Rocky Mountain National Park.

Symptoms of smoke exposure such as wheezing, coughing and shortness of breath are hard to distinguish from symptoms of the coronavirus, experts have said, making it difficult for many sufferers to know what is causing their discomfort.

The early symptoms of Covid look a lot like breathing bad air for a period of hours, Mr. Polis said.

Wildfire smoke can also make people more susceptible to catching the virus.

When your immune system is overwhelmed by particles, its not going to do such a good job fighting other things, like viruses, Sarah Henderson, a senior environmental health scientist at the British Columbia Center for Disease Control, said this summer.

As of Saturday night, there have been almost 94,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and 2,241 deaths in Colorado since the start of the pandemic, according to a New York Times database. Over the past week, the state has averaged more than 1,300 new cases per day, an increase of 79 percent from the average of two weeks earlier.

Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio

The day before its first kickoff of 2020, the Big Ten Conference was still unveiling rules for a football season that had been postponed, revived, truncated and compromised in efforts to contain the pandemic.

On Thursday, the conference announced a no contest rule for games canceled if team personnel tested positive for the virus which seemed inevitable because the schedule has no bye weeks and, therefore, no wiggle room for last-minute changes. The intention is to play nine games in nine weeks to catch up to the three Power Five conferences that have already started.

But just over a month ago, no one thought the Big Ten made up of 14 schools across the Midwest and Northeast would begin football on Friday night, with the University of Illinois at the University of Wisconsin, even as the home teams state ranked fourth in the country in per capita cases over the past seven days, and first among the states with Big Ten programs.

Having football while I cant go to class in a way, its nice that were having this one thing thats unifying, said Anne Isman, a sophomore at Wisconsin who is living in an apartment in Madison. At the same time, the timing feels a little off.

Fans and parties will be barred from all of the leagues stadiums, but the precautions have not fully reassured the mayors of certain Big Ten towns.

They know that what happens at the stadiums will be only one part of footballs return. Fear of groups breaking recommended social-distancing protocols led 12 mayors of areas surrounding 11 Big Ten schools to send a letter to the conference this week, citing concerns about what bringing football back means for college towns as fans congregate to watch games the virus an omnipresent risk freely floating between face paint, beer bottles and potlucks.

We know the history of football games within our cities, the mayors wrote. They generate a lot of activity, social gatherings and consumption of alcohol.

A spokesman for President Andrzej Duda of Poland said on Saturday that Mr. Duda had tested positive for the coronavirus and would go into isolation, just days after Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the deputy prime minister and head of the governing party, entered quarantine after exposure to somebody who had been infected.

The announcement came amid a moment of crisis for Poland, which has been combating one of the most severe outbreaks in Europe, with hospital beds filling at an alarming rate.

Poland largely avoided the first wave of the pandemic by imposing an early lockdown in March, and nearly a third of its more than 240,000 total cases have emerged in the past week.

The latest wave of cases has forced the country to implement new restrictions on public life and to convert the national stadium in Warsaw into a temporary field hospital that can accommodate 500 virus patients. Mr. Duda visited the stadium on Friday and met with site managers.

The new restrictions will require all cafes, bars and restaurants to close, except for takeout; gyms and swimming pools were also shut. Residents must use face coverings outside their homes, and remote teaching will become the norm for older children in primary schools, as well as in high schools and at universities.

Several months into the pandemic, Mr. Duda joined the ranks of leaders who have contracted the virus, including President Trump, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain and President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil.

The spokesman who announced Mr. Dudas condition said he was feeling well.

Monika Pronczuk and Tess Felder

global roundup

The Czech Republics prime minister has demanded the resignation of the countrys health minister after the health minister was photographed leaving a restaurant without a face covering.

The health minister, Roman Prymula, an epidemiologist who began his job in late September, has so far refused to resign. The prime minister has threatened to fire him, but he does not have the power to do so.

The Czech Republic is in the midst of the coronavirus crisis. Cases are rising faster than anywhere else in Europe, with 81,970 cases recorded over the past week. The government has been imposing more and more restrictions in the hope of containing the spread of the virus.

Mr. Prymula had announced a partial lockdown beginning Thursday that closed shops and services, barred people from leaving their homes except for vital business and limited contact with people from other households. Restaurants, bars and cafes have been closed since Oct. 14, with the exception of carryout until 8 p.m. nightly.

Despite this, Mr. Prymula was photographed by a tabloid newspaper, Blesk, leaving the premises of a restaurant after midnight wearing no face mask after a meeting with a politician, Jaroslav Faltynek, who is first chairman of Prime Minister Andrej Babiss ANO movement.

Such a mistake cannot be excused, Mr. Babis said on Friday at a news conference. I do not care what Minister Prymula and Mr. Faltynek did there, who they invited and why. We cannot preach water and drink wine. He said he would fire Mr. Prymula if he did not resign and that Mr. Faltynek would also be resigning his ANO post.

In refusing to resign, Mr. Prymula said at a news conference, I did not break any rules, I walked through the restaurant to private premises.

Though Mr. Babis can recommend that Mr. Prymula be fired, the president must agree and usually that is what happens. But President Milos Zeman has voiced doubts about the move in this case. The two were meeting in the afternoon.

In other developments around the world:

Abdelmadjid Tebboune, the president of Algeria, said on Saturday that he would quarantine himself after senior government officials had been infected with the coronavirus. He said he was feeling well and that he would continue working during his quarantine.

The Metropolitan Police arrested 18 protesters in London on Saturday following clashes between demonstrators and the police that left three officers with minor injuries, the police said. The demonstration against lockdowns attracted a large number of protesters, with many not social distancing, violating coronavirus regulations, Cmdr. Ade Adelekan said.

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4 Pence Aides Test Positive for the Coronavirus - The New York Times