Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Ben Carson, has become the latest official of President Donald Trump to test positive for COVID-19. His deputy chief of staff, Coalter Baker, confirmed to the press that Carson is down with the coronavirus. Ben Carson tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday.
“Secretary Carson has tested positive for the coronavirus,” Baker said in a statement. “He is in good spirits and feels fortunate to have access to effective therapeutics which aid and markedly speed his recovery.”
An aide to the housing secretary confirmed that Carson, 69, tested positive for the coronavirus on Monday at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after complaining of COVID-19-like symptoms. Carson has since been discharged from the hospital.
Carson’s chief of staff, Andrew Hughes, revealed that Carson was recuperating at home and was beginning to get better. Hughes said all staff who had been in close contact with the secretary would be notified in due course and that the necessary precautions were being taken.
Later on Monday afternoon, reports emerged that another of Trump’s aides in his inner circle, David Bossie, had tested positive for the coronavirus. He was the prime candidate to lead the Trump campaign’s legal battle, as it challenges the outcome of the presidential election.
Carson is said to have been present in an election night party that also had in attendance the White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. According to information from sources, nearly everyone present at the party did not wear masks, including Meadow himself, who subsequently came down with the virus last week.
Carson, a famed neurosurgeon, is a member of the White House coronavirus taskforce. Before his diagnosis, he was regularly seen at various campaign events without his masks on. He had traveled to different parts of the country, especially in the southeast, to campaign for the president in the days preceding Election Day. Carson was in Florida and Georgia, where alongside his wife Candy, they were pictured without masks, engaging supporters.
Last week, Meadows and four other staffers of the president had tested positive for the coronavirus, prompting fears of another outbreak at the White House. According to inside sources, campaign officials were furious that the Trump campaign was privy of positive cases of the coronavirus among the top aides of the president without informing them to take the necessary precautions.
Public health experts have often criticized the administration’s total disregard of safety protocols from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aimed to flatten the curve and prevent the spread of the disease.
Source: cnn.com
