US delegation to Asia postponed after Nancy Pelosi tests positive for coronavirus
- The House speaker received the positive test after having tested negative earlier in the week, a spokesman said
- The congressional trip to Asia that Pelosi had planned to lead, reported to include a stop in Taiwan, has been put off with no indication of when it will be rescheduled
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has postponed a trip to Asia – including a reported planned stopover in Taiwan – after testing positive for Covid-19, her office said on Thursday.
The announcement came following media reports in Taiwan and Japan that Pelosi, Democrat of California, would travel to Taiwan after a trip to Japan, becoming the first House Speaker to visit the self-governed island in 25 years.
“A planned congressional delegation to Asia, led by [Pelosi], will be postponed to a later date,” Drew Hammill, Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, said on Twitter following the diagnosis.
Pelosi, 82, was asymptomatic, Hammill said, adding that she was isolating, according to guidance by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The positive diagnosis comes just a day after Pelosi and other congressional figures, all unmasked, stood beside US President Joe Biden for several minutes at an indoor ceremony marking the enactment of postal service reform legislation.
The two also appeared at another signing ceremony on Tuesday.
Despite their proximity, the White House said Biden was not considered a “close contact,” citing CDC guidance. The CDC determines someone to be a close contact of an infected individual if they are near one another for at least 15 minutes cumulatively over a 24-hour period.
Biden tested negative for Covid-19 on Wednesday night, the White House said, and would continue to test “regularly”.
Washington is experiencing a surge in infections of Covid-19, which has killed more than 982,000 people in the US.
Pelosi joins a number of other political leaders in the nation’s capital recently infected, including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and US Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Pelosi’s office gave no indication of when her Asia trip would be rescheduled, and did not respond to a request for comment about the itinerary that had been planned for the reported Taiwan leg.
The trip would have been just the latest in a string of congressional visits to Taiwan in recent years, as the US has sought to broadcast its commitment to helping Taiwan defend itself against possible military action by Beijing.
China views Taiwan as a renegade province that must ultimately be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary.
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The US does not maintain official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but is required by law to assist its efforts to defend itself, including through arms sales. Just this week, the Biden administration approved the sale of US$95 million worth of equipment to bolster Taiwan’s air-defence missile systems.
Biden has also rolled out new guidelines for US diplomats that encourage direct engagement with their Taiwanese counterparts, and has dispatched “unofficial” delegations of former officials as a show of support.
In two separate visits last November, congressional delegations met with senior officials in Taipei, including Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen.
But a trip by Pelosi would carry far greater significance than those visits, given the power she wields in Washington as House speaker. The last person in her role to visit Taiwan was Republican Newt Gingrich, who in 1997 met with Taiwan’s then-president Lee Teng-hui in Taipei.
Beijing warns of ‘forceful measures’ if Pelosi visits Taiwan
Appearing to recognise the significance of a potential visit by Pelosi, Beijing on Thursday vowed “forceful measures” if the trip went ahead, warning that it would “seriously undermine the political foundation of Sino-US relations”.
Beijing gave no indication of what those measures would be. It has sanctioned other US lawmakers in recent years over their legislative efforts to challenge China on its human rights record.
So far, it has not extended those sanctions to Pelosi, even as she carries a reputation in Washington as a long-standing and vocal critic of the Chinese government.
