Former Vice President Joe Biden will not attend the Democratic National Convention in person to accept his party’s nomination for the White House over concerns about the novel coronavirus.
Biden’s campaign announced on Wednesday that the presumptive nominee would not attend the convention later this month in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, according to Bloomberg News.
Jeff Zeleny, a senior Washington correspondent for CNN, also reported on Wednesday that the former vice president was likely to accept the nomination with a speech planned in his home state of Delaware.
Similarly, the Daily Mail reported that other high-profile Democrats scheduled to address the convention, including former President Barack Obama, would no longer be doing so in person in Wisconsin.
Biden, who at the age of 78 is in the at-risk category for the coronavirus, had initially intended to attend a scaled-down version of the convention, but that calculus seems to have changed as COVID19 cases and deaths have spiked nationally in recent weeks.
The decision follows a similar move made by President Donald Trump, who in late July announced he was abandoning plans to accept renomination at a large scale convention in Jacksonville, Florida.
“It’s hard for us to say we should have a lot of people packed into a room and then other people shouldn’t do it,” Trump said at the time. “There’s nothing more crowded than a convention.”
Biden has curtailed his public appearances in recent months because of the pandemic.
The former vice president’s campaign did not return requests for comment on this story.