Donald Trump Claims He Is No Longer Contagious, Despite Warnings From Experts
Donald Trump said on Thursday that he doesn’t believe he is contagious with coronavirus any longer, just days after he left Walter Reed National Military Medical Center where he was treated for the disease, CNBC reported.
“First of all, I think I’m better,” he said to Maria Bartiromo. “I’d love to do a rally tonight. I wanted to do one last night, but I think I’m better to a point that I feel better than I did, I jokingly said, 20 years ago. I feel perfect. There’s nothing wrong.”
Despite Trump’s confidence, experts claim otherwise. As reported by ABC News, experts suggest that it’s impossible to know whether the president is contagious just one week after he was diagnosed. Dr. Benjamin Pinsky, who leads Stanford University’s virology labs, said there is no diagnostic test that would be able to determine if Trump is still infectious at this point.
“There is absolutely a chain of unknowns,” he said.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top coronavirus disease expert, claimed that for someone to be deemed not contagious, they would likely need to have two negative PCR lab tests 24 hours apart.
“So, if the president goes 10 days without symptoms, and they do the tests that we were talking about, then you could make the assumption, based on good science, that he is not infected.”
Fauci previously warned that Trump’s recovery could still face a downturn.
Gigi Gronvall of Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security said that testing has limitations that prevent the process from ever being completely accurate. According to Gronvall, adhering to social distancing, hand-washing, and mask-wearing is crucial in the face of such uncertainty.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, individuals experiencing mild to moderate coronavirus remain infectious for a maximum of 10 days after the onset of symptoms. However, the agency claimed that people who have more severe symptoms could sometimes remain contagious for longer than 10 days.
Dr. Leana Wen, the former Baltimore health commissioner, warned that Trump appears to have had a severe case of COVID-19, which means he will likely remain infectious longer than the average patient.
Per ABC News, Trump will reach 10 days symptom-free on Sunday, based on the claims of the White House doctors who have treated him.
Despite concerns from public health experts, Trump’s campaign is allegedly already in the midst of planning rallies. As reported by CTV News, the president is reportedly planning a trip to Pennsylvania on Monday and Michigan on Tuesday.
