WASHINGTON: The US President Donald Trump has decided that he will be tested daily for COVID-19 after one of his valets tested positive for the virus.
A military aide of Trump, whom the White House officials described as a personal valet, tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday.
The valet, a member of the military, would have had very close contact with Trump, and assisted him with his food, clothes and other personal needs, CBS News reported.
Trump, however, has denied having close contact with the sick valet.
“I’ve had very little personal contact with this gentleman,” Trump told reporters on Thursday in the Oval Office. “I know who he is, good person, but I’ve had very little contact. (Vice President) Mike (Pence) has had very little contact with him. But Mike was tested and I was tested. We were both tested,” Trump said.
Trump said he, the vice president and other staff of the White House would be tested for COVID-19 every day.
“I just had a test. In fact, I had one on Thursday and one on Friday, and it is negative. Mike just had a test and it is negative,” he said on a day when the US passed yet another grim milestone of having 75,000 deaths due to COVID-19.
“But they do the tests and it just shows you that the fallacy it is what I have been saying testing is not a perfect art. No matter what you do, testing is not a perfect art. So, we test once a week. Now we are going to go testing once a day. But even when you test once a day, somebody could something happens where they catch something,” the President said.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the United States has reported over 76,000 deaths and has above 1,256,000 cases of COVID-19 infections, making the country the worst hit by the pandemic.