CNN’s chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta criticized President Donald Trump for going to the Oval Office today instead of isolating in the White House residence because he currently has coronavirus on Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Lead.”
When asked if Trump should be in the Oval Office, Gupta said, “No, he should be in isolation. That is pretty clear, regardless of whether president or anybody if you have coronavirus, there are all sorts of timelines in this sort of thing. It’s not an exact science but at least ten days after people start having symptoms is typically the infectious sort of period. They have got to assume that he has the virus, he is shedding the virus, so he is putting, you know, those people who are going to be at risk. Is he wearing a mask? Is there additional ventilation inside there? Are there people within close proximity? Are they wearing personal protective equipment, and do they know how to wear it properly?”
He continued, “He, obviously, shouldn’t be in the office. We have been telling people for months if you come back with a positive diagnosis of this, you need to be in isolation and the same advice for the president as well.”
He added, “There has been a clear sort of super-spreader type event at the White House. You know, most of that may have been linked to the Rose Garden event, although there were probably events around that Rose Garden event inside the White House, inside some of those smaller settings. So I know a lot of people aren’t there. So that is good. If you start to look at what makes this most likely to disperse, it is the indoors, is poor ventilation. All of the data we look at is people who have not necessarily been diagnosed. We don’t have testing so for people who have been tested and have coronavirus, they are in isolation. So the idea of saying based on someone we know is actively shedding virus and currently has COVID is in a small setting, potentially lots of people around in a cramped setting, the concern is high. I don’t know how many people are actually working there right now, Jake, but we have had, you know, a super-spreader type event already happen at the White House and now you have somebody with active disease who is shedding virus who is apparently going through that area.”
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