Mon 05 October 2020:
US President Donald Trump sparked an angry backlash from the medical community Sunday with a protocol-breaking visit to his supporters outside the hospital where he is being treated for the highly-infectious, potentially deadly new coronavirus.
Trump has consistently downplayed the pandemic and, prior to his diagnosis, rarely wore a mask. The World Health Organization (WHO) and medical experts say face masks, hand-washing and physical distancing are key to curbing the spread of COVID-19.
Video showed Trump, wearing a black mask, waving from the back seat of a black four-wheel drive with two men – also masked in the front seats.
“President Trump took a short, last-minute motorcade ride to wave to his supporters outside and has now returned to the Presidential Suite inside Walter Reed,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement. “Appropriate measures” had been taken, he added.
Trump was admitted to Walter Reed, a military hospital near Washington, DC on Friday shortly after he was diagnosed with COVID-19. The 74-year-old’s doctors said he has been given oxygen, as well as experimental treatments – which are usually used for people who have more severe cases of the disease, including the steroid dexamethasone.
Trump has posted videos and photos about his experience in hospital on Twitter since he was admitted.
“We’re going to pay a little surprise to some of the great patriots that we have out on the street,” Trump said in his most recent video – posted shortly before the drive-past.
That’s Trump driving by his supporters outside Walter Reed military hospital. pic.twitter.com/eqA0RGkr6A
— Philip Crowther (@PhilipinDC) October 4, 2020
Dangerous political stunt
But Zeke Emanuel, chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and regular TV pundit, described the appearance as “shameful.”
“Making his Secret Service agents drive with a COVID-19 patient, with windows up no less, put them needlessly at risk for infection. And for what? A PR stunt,” he tweeted.
Dr James Phillips, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at George Washington University, was among those criticising the drive-by, which he called “political theater”.
“Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential drive-by has to be quarantined for 14 days,” Phillips wrote on Twitter. “They might get sick. They may die.”
People with COVID-19 are generally required to quarantine for 14 days to avoid infecting others and the virus spreads more easily in indoor, confined environments.
Public health experts have expressed alarm at the “White House cluster” that has been linked to the 26 September Rose Garden celebration of conservative judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
Nearly 210,000 Americans have died from the disease, the highest death toll anywhere in the world.
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