Trump 'not concerned' as coronavirus cases rise in DC area
Associated Press | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 4 years, 10 months AGO
PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump says he isn't concerned “at all” about the coronavirus getting closer to the White House after the nation's capital reported its first case Saturday.
Maryland officials warned Saturday that a person who attended the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in the suburb of Oxon Hill had tested positive for the virus. Both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence spoke at the conference. The White House said Saturday there was no indication that either had met or were in “close proximity” to the infected attendee.
Asked if he was concerned about the virus getting closer, Trump said: “No, I’m not concerned at all. No, I’m not. We’ve done a great job.”
When asked whether his thousand person campaign rallies would would continue in light of the CPAC case, the president replied, “We’ll have tremendous rallies.” Trump held his most recent campaign rally last Monday in Charlotte, North Carolina.
He waved off other questions to join a dinner for the president of Brazil, who was visiting Trump at the president's home in south Florida.
A Marine at Virginia’s Fort Belvoir became the first military case of coronavirus reported inside the U.S., a Pentagon official said on background prior to the announcement. The Marine was being treated at Fort Belvoir Community Hospital, located south of Washington, and had recently returned from an overseas assignment, Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said on Twitter.
The District of Columbia recorded its first case on Saturday. District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser said testing at the public health lab of the D.C. Department of Forensic Sciences yielded its first presumptive positive coronavirus case.
On Friday, the political group AIPAC said two people who attended its Washington conference this past week had tested positive for coronavirus.
ARTICLES BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hong Kong police arrest 4 from university student union
HONG KONG (AP) — Four members of a Hong Kong university student union were arrested Wednesday for allegedly advocating terrorism by paying tribute to a person who stabbed a police officer and then killed himself, police said.
For South Sudan mothers, COVID-19 shook a fragile foundation
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Paska Itwari Beda knows hunger all too well. The young mother of five children — all of them under age 10 — sometimes survives on one bowl of porridge a day, and her entire family is lucky to scrape together a single daily meal, even with much of the money Beda makes cleaning offices going toward food. She goes to bed hungry in hopes her children won’t have to work or beg like many others in South Sudan, a country only a decade old and already ripped apart by civil war.
For South Sudan mothers, COVID-19 shook a fragile foundation
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Paska Itwari Beda knows hunger all too well. The young mother of five children — all of them under age 10 — sometimes survives on one bowl of porridge a day, and her entire family is lucky to scrape together a single daily meal, even with much of the money Beda makes cleaning offices going toward food. She goes to bed hungry in hopes her children won’t have to work or beg like many others in South Sudan, a country only a decade old and already ripped apart by civil war.