The Covid hits the political spheres of Washington
A wave of Covid-19 contamination has been affecting political spheres in Washington since a gala dinner organized on Saturday in the American capital.
Nancy Pelose, February 23, 2022 in Washington.
AFP
Speaker of the House of Representatives and Washington’s most powerful woman, Nancy Pelosi, tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday, the latest victim of a wave of infections among Washington’s political elite.
“After testing negative this week, Nancy Pelosi has tested positive for Covid-19,” her spokesperson Drew Hammill tweeted, adding that 82-year-old “Madam Speaker” was asymptomatic and s was isolated. She canceled a press conference scheduled for Thursday and a parliamentary mission to Asia she was due to attend has been postponed, he added.
Nancy Pelosi stood the day before alongside Joe Biden, the near-octogenarian president who recently received his second booster dose of the Covid vaccine, at an event at the White House. She was already there on Tuesday for a ceremony in the presence of former Democratic President Barack Obama.
Joe Biden, 79, “is not considered a contact case,” the White House said on Thursday, explaining that the president had “had brief exchanges with (Nancy Pelosi) for the past two days”. The president, who has participated in several events in recent days in packed rooms where very few guests wore the mask, received a negative test on Wednesday evening, it was said.
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser also revealed on Thursday that she tested positive. “After feeling allergic symptoms this week, I did a self-test yesterday and a PCR test confirmed the positive result,” explained the elected Democrat, without specifying where she had been contaminated. These announcements come after those of several positive cases among the participants, ministers and elected officials, at a gala dinner on Saturday in the American capital.
More transmissible subvariant
Justice Minister Merrick Garland and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, both positive, attended the annual Gridiron Club dinner on Saturday, held face-to-face after two editions canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
This evening is every year the opportunity for the political and media elite of Washington to engage in a great exercise in self-mockery. The influential elected Democrat Adam Schiff, also present during this great rally, had already announced on Tuesday that he had tested positive. Thursday, it was the turn of Republican Senator Susan Collins to announce being positive.
Neither Joe Biden nor Nancy Pelosi were there. Neither did Vice President Kamala Harris, but is nonetheless in contact after her communications director Jamal Simmons, who attended the dinner, tested positive on Wednesday. Despite everything, she maintained the events scheduled on her agenda and went to the Senate on Thursday afternoon for the confirmation vote of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson at the Supreme Court.
Not a first
The coronavirus epidemic has been receding for several months in the most bereaved country in the world (nearly a million dead), and many states have relaxed their protocols on wearing masks indoors. US health authorities advise caution, however, considering that the now dominant US-dominant BA.2 subvariant is more transmissible than the previous ones even though it appears to have less severe effects.
The vaccination rate, which had exploded from January 2021 thanks to a vast national campaign launched by Joe Biden, has largely run out of steam with 65.7% of the American population fully vaccinated, but nearly 90% for people aged 65 and over. This is not the first time that the Covid-19 has spread in the politico-media sphere of Washington.
In October 2020, more than twenty participants in a ceremony organized by the Trump administration at the White House had tested positive. Among them was the former Republican president, who had been hospitalized, his wife Melania, some of his close collaborators, elected officials and journalists. The ceremony was held outdoors, but guests did not wear masks or observe physical distancing rules.
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