President Donald Trump should quarantine for 14 days after one of his personal White House staffers tested positive for coronavirus, a former Centers for Disease Control official recommended to CNN’s John King on Thursday.
“My recommendation would be to quarantine for 14 days from the last contact with the confirmed case, in this case, the valet,” Dr. Cyrus Shahpar, who in 2017 served as deputy team lead for the CDC’s global rapid response team, said in an interview. “That means staying home, no visitors, separating yourself from others, monitoring for symptoms, wearing a face-covering when you’re around others. Ideally, you’re not, but that would be the recommendation.”
A U.S. Navy member who serves as a personal valet to Trump tested positive this week for coronavirus. “We were recently notified by the White House Medical Unit that a member of the United States military, who works on the White House campus, has tested positive for coronavirus,” deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement. “The president and the vice president have since tested negative for the virus and they remain in great health.”
White House valets assist the first family with food service and other tasks around the White House.
Press coverage has highly scrutinized the White House over its mixed messages on social distancing and wearing of face masks based on contradictions between its public recommendations and personal behavior. Vice President Mike Pence incited controversy last
Shahpar said Trump should “set an example” by going into quarantine even if he did not test positive for the virus. “I think he should set an example and really go into that quarantine of 14 days. And don’t put too much stock into one negative test,” Shahpar explained, alluding to the fact that asymptomatic spread is a known characteristic of the virus. “It takes time to develop, you know, enough virus to test positive. So one test today doesn’t necessarily mean that, you know, over the next few days, it may not be something different.”
Watch the video above, via CNN.