Trump says he has taken coronavirus test, awaits result
White House checks temperatures of reporters before they enter briefing room for press conference with US president who has been in close contact with infected individuals
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US President Donald Trump announced Saturday he had been tested for the coronavirus but had not yet received the results.
Trump has had multiple direct and indirect contacts with people who have tested positive for the pandemic virus. On Friday, he declared a state of emergency as schools and workplaces across the country shuttered, flights were canceled and Americans braced for war against the health threat.
Trump said he had his own temperature taken before speaking to reporters.
“It was totally normal,” Trump said. “If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have been here.”
Trump spent time last weekend at his private club in Florida with at least three people who have now tested positive.
The Brazilian Embassy in Washington announced late Friday that the country’s chargé d’affaires, Nestor Forster, tested positive after sitting at Trump’s dinner table.
So, too, have a top aide to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro — Fabio Wajngarten, who posed for a photo with Trump — and an individual who attended a fundraiser Sunday with Trump, according to two Republican officials.
A White House doctor had said Trump “remains without symptoms” and did not need to be tested.
Contrary to medical advice, the president was also seen shaking hands all round as he gathered his coronavirus response team at the White House on Friday.
The coronavirus is thought to spread between people in close contact, and “social distancing” has become a watchword around the world.
Speaking from the Rose Garden, Trump flouted public health officials’ advice by publicly and repeatedly shaking hands during the presentation on new efforts to combat the pandemic. At the same time, he was stressing that “anyone can be a carrier of the virus” and risk infecting older Americans and others at higher risk.
“SOCIAL DISTANCING,” the president tweeted early Saturday.
The White House announced later in the day that it is now conducting temperature checks on anyone who is in close contact with Trump and US Vice President Mike Pence.
The move is being taken out of an abundance of caution in response to the coronavirus outbreak, said Judd Deere, a White House spokesman.
A representative from the White House physician’s office took the temperatures of members of the media who were at the White House on Saturday, going around to each person and putting the device to their heads.
A reporter with a suspected elevated temperature was not allowed into the briefing room for a news conference with Trump and Pence about the outbreak.
Public health officials say that individuals with a cough and elevated temperatures of 100.4 degrees or higher are deemed concerning.
Pence’s spokeswoman, Katie Miller, tweeted that according to the White House Medical Unit, the temperature was taken three times over a 15 minute period and all three registered above the 100.4 guidelines.
The Times of Israel Community.