The White House says it is conducting contact tracing after the U.S. vice-president’s press secretary, Katie Miller, tested positive for coronavirus.
A member of U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence’s staff has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, briefly delaying his Friday flight to Iowa and prompting some fellow passengers on Air Force Two to disembark, according to a White House official.
Pence’s flight was delayed more than an hour on Friday morning and, according to press pool reports, passengers who were Pence staff members appeared to disembark before departure. It was not immediately clear whether the infected staffer had been aboard Air Force Two on Friday morning.
“This morning we had someone on the vice-president’s staff test positive and so out of abundance of caution we went back and looked into all the person’s contacts most recently,” the official told reporters travelling with Pence, according to a media pool report.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said the person who received the latest positive test was Katie Miller, 25, Pence’s press secretary and wife of Stephen Miller, Trump’s senior White House adviser.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany also confirmed the positive test. She pointed to new steps taken to further protect top officials, saying the White House is now conducting contact tracing and putting in place all guidelines recommended for essential workers.
“We’ve taken every single precaution to protect the president,” McEnany told reporters, also pointing to regular cleanings and adherence to distancing guidelines of six feet between individuals that are not always followed at crowded White House events.
A senior administration official said Friday that Trump had not been in recent contact with Miller. The official said the staffer may have been in contact with six people who were scheduled to travel on Friday with the vice-president, and they were removed from the flight before it departed.
The news heightens fears of contagion to top officials like Pence, who leads the coronavirus task force which oversees the federal response to the coronavirus crisis, and who has resumed a robust travel schedule despite a rising national caseload.
On Thursday, a