US President Donald Trumps’s daughter Ivanka’s personal assistant has tested positive for COVID-19, making her the third White House staff member to be infected from COVID-19, according to media reports on Saturday.
The assistant, who works in a personal capacity for Ivanka Trump, the senior advisor to the President, has not been around her in several weeks, the CNN reported.
She has been teleworking for nearly two months and was tested out of caution, the report quoted a source as saying.
The assistant was not symptomatic and Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner too took the test for COVID-19 which came negative on Friday, the person familiar with the matter told the US news channel.
The development comes a day after President Trump confirmed that Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary Katie Miller had tested positive for the coronavirus.
“She’s a wonderful young woman, Katie, she tested very good for a long period of time and then all of a sudden today she tested positive,” Trump said during a meeting at the White House.
He said Miller had not come into contact with him but spent some time with Pence.
One of Trump’s personal valets tested positive for the coronavirus on Thursday after which he said that he would be tested for the virus daily.
While contact tracing was performed inside the White House after Miller’s test came positive, according to a senior official.
The White House is now making sure staffers wear masks in the White House residence, and coronavirus tests and temperature checks are being boosted throughout the West Wing which is also being sanitised on a more frequent basis, the official said.
Pence, who leads the White House coronavirus task force, recently went on a trip to the Mayo Clinic without wearing a face mask, despite being told about the clinic”s policy saying they’re required.
Trump also declined to wear a mask this week during portions of his tour of a mask-making facility in Arizona.
America which has become the epicentre of Coronavirus outbreak is the hardest hit by the pandemic with 1,283,829 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and the number of fatalities reaching 77,178., according to Johns Hopkins University data.