On Monday, White House physician Sean Conley said that President Trump had registered consecutive days in which he's tested negative for COVID-19. The news came on the same date that Trump headed to a packed campaign rally in Sanford, Florida.
"In response to your inquiry regarding the President's most recent COVID-19 tests, I can share with you that he has tested NEGATIVE, on consecutive days, using the Abbott BinaxNOW antigen card," said Conley. He added that those tests occurred "in context with additional clinical and laboratory data."
Speaking of this data, Conley wrote that it was made up of "viral load, subgenomic RNA and PCR cycle threshold measurements, as well as ongoing assessment of viral culture data."
The letter concluded that the president is "not infectious to others," which echoes a similar message that Conley issued on Saturday. He also stated, on Saturday, that the president is cleared for an "active schedule."
CNN adds that it's not clear what consecutive days Trump tested positive, while also noting that the Abbott BinaxNOW test he reportedly took may lack precision, as it's only proven accurate in people being tested within the first week of their symptoms starting to show. The FDA has also said they're not certain of how accurate Abbott BinaxNOW results are.
Trump's positive test was first announced on Thursday, October 1. The White House has not said when the president last tested negative prior to that announcement.
As for that aforementioned rally, a large crowd gathered for the event. The campaign was issuing temperature checks and distributed masks/hand sanitizer, but social distancing remained absent.
Trump also claimed to be "immune" and offered to kiss anyone in the crowd daring enough to chance it:
On a related note, this all comes on the same day that Dr. Anthony Fauci said that holding large rallies "was asking for trouble" due to the virus's surge in several states.
“We know that that is asking for trouble when you do that,” Fauci said of Trump’s decision to re-up a full campaign rallying schedule, according to The New York Times. “We’ve seen that when you have situations of congregate settings where there are a lot of people without masks, the data speak for themselves. It happens. And now is even more so a worse time to do that, because when you look at what’s going on in the United States, it’s really very troublesome.”
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