Robert C. O’Brien, President Trump’s national security adviser, has tested positive for coronavirus, the White House said Monday.
O’Brien is the highest-ranking Trump administration official known to have tested positive for COVID-19.
“He has mild symptoms and has been self-isolating and working from a secure location off-site,” the White House said in a statement.
“There is no risk of exposure to the President or the Vice President.
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The work of the National Security Council continues uninterrupted.” O’Brien is in frequent contact with President Trump, though it was not immediately clear how recently the two had been in close proximity.
The two appeared publicly together during a visit to U.S. Southern Command in Miami on July 10.
The United States reported 59,737 new coronavirus infections on Sunday, pushing the total number of cases that have been reported since February past 4,217,000.
Three US states — Nevada, Texas and South Carolina — saw their seven-day averages for fatalities reach new highs.
In the United States, at least 143,000 people have died of COVID-19 to date, amounting to approximately one-fifth of the world’s death toll.
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Here are some significant developments:
• The race to develop a vaccination against the novel coronavirus has hit a major milestone, with the launch of large-scale clinical trials that will test the effectiveness and safety of experimental vaccines developed by biotechnology company Moderna in collaboration with the U.S. government.
