Kamala Harris Tests Positive for Covid-19
Vice President Kamala Harris becomes the highest-ranking Biden administration official to test positive for Covid-19.
(Bloomberg) -- Vice President Kamala Harris tested positive for Covid-19, making her the highest-ranking Biden administration official to report being infected.
Harris received positive results Tuesday on both rapid and PCR tests and “has exhibited no symptoms, will isolate and continue to work from the vice president’s residence,” according to spokeswoman Kirsten Allen.
Harris, 57, isn’t considered a close contact of President Joe Biden, her office said. The vice president was traveling in California last week and returned to Washington on Monday, while Biden traveled to Oregon and Washington state before spending the weekend at his Wilmington, Delaware home.
Harris was supposed to join Biden at the presidential daily intelligence briefing Tuesday morning, but withdrew after testing positive, Allen said. She was last with the president on April 18 at the White House Easter egg roll.
Harris will follow the advice of her physicians and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and return to the White House when she tests negative, according to Allen.
Biden, 79, and Harris have spent more time unmasked with large groups of people in the weeks since the White House, along with state and local governments, relaxed mask mandates and vaccine requirements.
Administration officials have said there is risk involved with such events, but the president and vice president are seeking to demonstrate it’s relatively safe for Americans to resume in-person work and social events.
Harris joins a number of high-profile lawmakers and administration officials who have said they contracted the virus in the past month.
Senator Ron Wyden, who appeared with Biden last week in his home state of Oregon, and Connecticut Senator Christopher Murphy also said Tuesday they tested positive.
There was a major outbreak among White House and Cabinet officials, lawmakers staff and journalists surrounding Biden’s trip to Europe in late March as well as the white-tie Gridiron dinner in the nation’s capital earlier this month.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Maine Senator Susan Collins, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and her deputy, Karine Jean-Pierre, were among those infected.
Former President Barack Obama and a number of other congressional Democrats also said last month they caught the virus.
Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff said he tested positive on March 15, prompting the vice president to cancel several public appearances after they were deemed close contacts. Harris was also a close contact of her communications director, Jamal Simmons, earlier this month when he caught the virus.
The infections among Washington elites come amid the spread of the highly contagious Omicron subvariant known as BA.2. As of February, almost 58% of Americans had coronavirus antibodies in their blood, according to new CDC data, up from 33.5% in December, when the omicron wave hit the U.S.
Harris, who is fully vaccinated, received her second booster shot April 1, days after the Food and Drug Administration authorized an additional dose for people over 50. Evidence shows the second booster reduces the risk of severe Covid-19 cases, according to the FDA.
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