The White House’s top national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, tested positive for COVID-19, according to a statement from the White House.
O’Brien, 54, “has mild symptoms and has been self-isolating and working from a secure location off site,” a White House spokesperson said on Monday.
The statement added that “there is no risk of exposure” to President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, adding that the “work of the National Security Council continues uninterrupted.”
O’Brien had recently traveled to France to meet with President Emmanuel Macron, and he was also at a family gathering in recent days. His office in the White House is near the Oval Office and the vice president’s West Wing office.
Photos released by the National Security Council’s social media page showed O’Brien meeting with journalists and other officials. He was accompanied by staffers, Secret Service agents, and reporters on the trip.
Great to see #UK NSA @marksedwill today. We discussed important bilateral and global topics, including #HongKong, #China, #5G security, and #Iran. The U.S.-UK Special Relationship endures. pic.twitter.com/bYGMfrhIXH
— NSC (@WHNSC) July 16, 2020
He is not the first member of the Trump administration to have contracted the virus, as Pence’s press secretary Katie Miller tested positive for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, also known as the novel coronavirus, in May.
Two Secret Service members also reportedly contacted the virus after a Trump campaign event in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June.
The incident comes as infections and deaths continue to rise in some U.S. states. Last week, Trump resumed regular briefings with reporters about the pandemic.
So far, more than 4 million cases of the CCP virus—which emerged in Wuhan, China, late last year—have been confirmed in the United States along with more than 140,000 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
Trump also called off the Republican National Convention that was slated to be held in Jacksonville, Florida, in August over the CCP virus.
The president also began promoting the use of masks and posted a photo of himself wearing one on Twitter this month.
Trump hired O’Brien, a former lawyer and hostage negotiator, as the National Security Adviser about a week after John Bolton left the administration in the midst of disagreements on various foreign policy issues.
From The Epoch Times