White House coronavirus cases highlight risks of officials not following federal guidelines

The brouhaha over President Trump and Vice President Pence appearing at hospitals, factories and nursing homes without masks — despite Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines that encourage cloth face coverings when with groups of people — has been mostly political. Now, a clearer picture is emerging of the actual health risks of government officials working on the coronavirus response not following federal guidelines themselves.

Case in point: One of the two White House staffers who tested positive for coronavirus, Pence spokesperson Katie Miller, briefed reporters last Thursday without a mask outside a nursing home in Arlington, Va. Pence was there to distribute personal protective equipment to the home. The next day, Miller was removed from Air Force Two after receiving a positive test result, along with six other staffers who were in contact with her recently.

Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Debra Saunders, who was covering the nursing home event, noted that Miller at one point “coughed, then quipped that she didn’t have the coronavirus. I shrugged off the remark.”
The White House is now scrambling to ramp up its own safety procedures — even as Trump encourages the country to begin reopening — amid concerns that Miller and the military valet to the president who also tested positive may have infected others.

The concerns about a potential West Wing outbreak highlight the exact reason public health officials recommend that people should wear masks in public — and stay home if they have been exposed: It's possible to be an asymptomatic carrier of the highly infectious disease.

Miller, who tested negative as recently as the day before and “told other colleagues that she did not have symptoms, attended a senior staff meeting on the coronavirus at 8 a.m. on Friday and was near other aides, rattling some of her White House colleagues,” our colleagues Seung Min Kim, Josh Dawsey, and Amy Goldstein report.