Following the recent revelation that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows tested positive for COVID-19 and attended a White House election party on Tuesday, coming into close contact with members of the president’s family and not wearing a mask for days afterwards, Republican Representative Matt Gaetz, 6 White House workers and one Trump campaign worker have all contracted COVID-19 as well, according to Maggie Haberman, White House correspondent for The New York Times.
Furthermore, Bloomberg News reports that other White House and campaign employees are upset that Meadows didn’t publicly issue a statement or tell other workers after testing positive for coronavirus, but rather just told a few close individuals within his personal circle.
While the White House Medical Unit suggests that anyone who has 15 minutes of exposure with an infected individual should be notified as a means of contact tracing — that is, tracking the virus’s potential path of infection from one person to the next — none of the upset staffers were told of Meadow’s diagnosis until much later.
After Republican President Donald Trump contracted COVID-19 near the start of October, at least 34 individuals connected to him contracted the virus soon after.