Trump attended around 15 events in various states, from the 2020 presidential debate to fundraisers and rallies over the past several days
U.S. president Donald Trump has tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Just how many people could he have passed the virus on to? Normally, contact tracers try to tally up a person’s close contacts starting around two days before they first start showing symptoms. But when the person in question is the President of the United States, that list can get very large, very quickly, and contact tracing can become a nightmare. For instance, Trump attended around 15 events in various states, from the 2020 presidential debate to fundraisers and rallies over the past several days, The New York Times reported. And for at least some of that time, the virus was likely silently multiplying in his body. Seeing as he rarely wears a mask in public and continues to attend events that don’t follow social distancing guidelines, he likely spread the virus to others, said George Rutherford, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco. Related: Coronavirus live updates In particular, the president would likely have been quite infectious Thursday (Oct.1) when he flew to a private fundraiser at his Bedminster resort in New Jersey, Rutherford said. Though it’s still a bit of a jump to say at this point, „it’s possible that this fundraiser will turn into a superspreading event,“ Rutherford said. „He could’ve infected a lot of people.“ Contact tracing on steroids Typically, when a person becomes infected with the novel coronavirus, contract tracers will call that person and create a list of people who they have interacted with long enough and close enough for the virus to have infected. The contact tracers will then call all of these potentially exposed people to alert them that they should self-quarantine and get a test in order to prevent further propagation of the virus. But because Trump has recently interacted with so many people, including other top government officials, finding and connecting with all of his contacts would be a Herculean task. The normal entities may not be trusted or able to do the tracing. „I suspect they won’t turn it over to the Washington D.C. health department,“ but maybe the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or the Secret Service will attempt the contact tracing for the president, Rutherford told Live Science. Contact tracers typically go back 48 hours from when a person starts showing symptoms to identify close contacts, or those who have been together for at least 15 minutes within 6 feet (1.8 meters) of each other, Rutherford said. If a person is infected on Day 0, on average, that person tests positive on Day 3, they become infectious on Day 4, develop symptoms on Day 5 and remain the most infectious (the body has the highest viral load) until about day 7 or 8, Rutherford said. The infection timeline „If the president is indeed getting tested every single day, which is what we hear, that means he would have tested negative on Monday, Tuesday [and] Wednesday,“ before testing positive on Thursday (Oct.
