Dr. Sanjay Gupta Says White House Event Debuting Amy Coney Barrett Nomination ‘Is Increasingly Sounding Like a Super-Spreader Event’
CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta called out the White House’s formal rollout event for Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination as a “potential super-spreader event” after news broke that former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway has also tested positive for the coronavirus. Conway revealed her infection on Friday night and became the sixth attendee — so far — to have tested positive.
During Friday night’s CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, a panel discussed the ongoing drip of new positive Covid infections that went to Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination announcement. And during the broadcast, Lemon noted Conway’s own revelation on Twitter.
“Now we have breaking news,” Lemon said. “We don’t know if there is where it happened. But this person was certainly there with them. No social distancing. No mask. Tonight, this is from Kellyanne Conway. ‘Tonight I tested for positive for the Covid-19. My symptoms are mild. Light cough. And I’m feeling fine.'”
Lemon then rolled video from the Barrett nomination in the Rose Garden, which showed Conway and a number of other now-infected Republican politicians or conservative figures sitting in close proximity to one another, most of whom were not wearing masks.
“What is going on?” the CNN host asked of Gupta.
“I feel for her and the people newly diagnosed. Having talked to people who received that diagnosis, it’s jarring for people. It makes it very real. And statistically chances are people will recover,” Gupta pointed out. “To your point, I think we’re starting to be able to describe this as a potential super-spreader event that occurred. It was outside, which is beneficial. But people unmasked, within six feet, closely clustered for long periods of time, that’s where many of the people maybe had the first exposure.”
“Can you trace people, hopefully find their contacts and quarantine them. It can be really hard,” Gupta added. “Because people if they didn’t get tested they don’t know. They could have been spreading for a long time. With the president, if he developed symptoms Thursday. It’s usually a few days before you develop symptoms where you’re the most contagious. During that time, the president traveled to five states, he was in Washington. He came in contact with a lot of people. It becomes really challenging. That event that you’re looking at is increasingly sounding like a super-spreader event. We haven’t said that very often, Don, beacuse it’s so hard to do contact tracing in this country. When you have 40,000 new infections a day, it’s a laborious task to do contact tracing. But this one’s becoming clearer.”
Watch the video above, via CNN.
