National security advisor Robert O’Brien has tested positive for COVID-19, the White House announced Monday, making him the highest-ranking member of President Trump’s inner circle known to have contracted the disease.
The positive test is the latest prominent reminder that Trump, who spent months dismissing and downplaying the danger of the coronavirus, has been unable to escape its impact as it spikes in communities across the country.
White House officials, in an unsigned statement, said O’Brien’s symptoms were mild and that he had “been self-isolating and working from a secure location off site.”
The statement said there was no risk of exposure to Trump or Vice President Mike Pence and that the work of the National Security Council “continues uninterrupted.”
The statement did not say how recently O’Brien, who normally meets regularly or travels with the president, had been with Trump or other senior White House or national security officials.
Nor did it say where and when O’Brien might have been exposed and when he received his test results.
O’Brien, a Los Angeles lawyer before he was named Trump’s fourth national security advisor, is not the first official who regularly comes into contact with the president to contract COVID-19.
Others, including Katie Miller, Pence’s communications director, also have tested positive. Trump said last week that he was tested regularly, even as he claimed that the nation’s massive caseload — now above 4 million — stemmed from testing and not the widening contagion.
Trump’s attempts to push back against the raging pandemic and return to business as usual have been thwarted by the realities of the spreading virus.
He was forced to cancel the in-person portion of the Republican National Convention, scheduled for Aug. 24-27, and he has not staged large campaign rallies since coronavirus cases spiked in Tulsa, Okla., after a Trump rally there last month.
The latest national shock came Monday, when a rash of positive tests for the Miami Marlins called the Major League Baseball season into question. The team announced Monday that their home opener that night would be canceled because of the outbreak among players and coaches.
Trump previously had urged professional sports leagues to resume their seasons, seeing sports as signs of normalcy.
