White House press secretary Jen Psaki has Covid-19, but Joe Biden tests negative
- White House press secretary Jen Psaki will skip Joe Biden’s trip to Europe after testing positive for Covid-19
- Psaki said she had two socially distanced meetings with Biden on Monday and was not considered a close contact
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that she is positive again for Covid-19 and would not accompany President Joe Biden to Europe this week for urgent meetings with world counterparts on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Biden tested negative on Tuesday, she said.
Psaki’s reinfection follows recent positive tests for Vice-President Kamala Harris’ husband and Ireland’s prime minister, who was in the nation’s capital last week for a series of in-person celebrations of St Patrick’s Day with Biden and other officials.
The scares happened as the Biden administration tries to help the United States ease back into its pre-pandemic patterns, even as cases climb in Europe due to a new, more contagious variant of the Omicron strain of the coronavirus.
Psaki tweeted that she took a laboratory test for Covid-19 as part of her preparation for the trip, which gets underway on Wednesday, and was later notified of a positive result.
She said she had two “socially distanced meetings” with Biden on Monday and that he is not considered a “close contact” under Centres for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.
Psaki said she has experienced only mild symptoms of Covid-19 and credited being vaccinated against the disease.
It is the second time Covid-19 has forced Psaki to bow out of accompanying Biden abroad. After disclosing she had tested positive, she sat out last fall’s trip to Rome and Glasgow, Scotland.
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It’s not unheard of for someone who has had Covid-19 to become infected again. Reinfections became more likely after the super-contagious Omicron variant emerged, even among the fully vaccinated, but those cases tend to be very mild.
As coronavirus cases plummeted around the United States this year, and states and localities dropped their mask-wearing requirements, the White House did as well. As of March 1, neither White House staff nor reporters were required to wear face masks inside the building.
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But some scientists are beginning to worry that the Omicron variant known as BA. 2 could soon push up Covid-19 cases in the US, after months of case declines and people taking off their masks and returning to indoor spaces.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton also tested positive for Covid-19 on Tuesday. Clinton, 74, said she’s experiencing mild cold symptoms and that her husband, former US president Bill Clinton, had tested negative.
Additional reporting by Tribune News Service
