Trump leaves the hospital to greet supporters and says in a video he has ‘learned a lot’ about Covid.President Trump, on his third day of hospitalization for the coronavirus, briefly visited well-wishers gathered outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center during a drive-by in a sport utility vehicle with two Secret Service agents on Sunday evening,
in apparent disregard of federal safety guidelines.In a video posted moments earlier on his Twitter account, Mr. Trump, his voice a bit husky but otherwise normal, tried to project the image of a man on the mend, saying he was getting “great reports from the doctors.”...
“It’s been a very interesting journey; I learned a lot about Covid,” Mr. Trump said in the video. “I learned it by really going to school. This is the real school, this isn’t the let’s-read-the-book school. And I get it, and I understand it, and it’s a very interesting thing, and I’m going to be letting you know about it. In the meantime, we love the U.S.A., and we love what’s happening.”
He sat in the back of the vehicle, wearing a black cloth mask, sitting behind at least two Secret Service agents. Face coverings are a safeguard — and the N95 masks the agents seemed to be wearing are an especially effective barrier — but they are not an absolute guarantee of stopping transmission, especially in a small enclosed space occupied by a person known to be infected.It was not clear if there was a partition in the S.U.V.
“Appropriate precautions were taken in the execution of this movement to protect the President and all those supporting it, including PPE,” Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said in an email Sunday night. “The movement was cleared by the medical team as safe to do.”...
President Trump, who has been hospitalized since Friday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, drove by and waved to supporters outside the facility. In a new video, he said he had “learned a lot about Covid.”
Secret Service officers accompanied Mr. Trump to the hospital on Friday, but that was an emergency situation; Sunday’s drive was a “last-minute” decision by the president, Deere told reporters.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for patients infected with the virus stipulate that health care facilities “limit transport and movement of the patient outside of the room to medically essential purposes.”...
The trip quickly drew scrutiny online and raised questions about whether it had breached medical protocols....
“The risk of COVID19 transmission inside is as high as it gets outside of medical procedures. The irresponsibility is astounding. My thoughts are with the Secret Service forced to play.”
Dr. Phillips, whose Twitter profile lists him as the chief of disaster and operational medicine at George Washington University, tweeted that every person riding in the S.U.V. with Mr. Trump needed to quarantine for 14 days.
“They may die,” Dr. Phillips wrote. “For political theater. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater. This is insanity.”Not everyone was skeptical. Mr. Trump’s supporters, lining the sidewalk in front of the hospital gates, let out a collective whoop of “We love Trump!” as the president’s motorcade slow-rolled past.
“God bless our president — I will die for him. I will die for that man happily!” shouted a man in the crowd, according to audio and video posted by C-SPAN.
NYT
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