HUD Secretary Ben Carson tests positive for COVID-19

The Associated Press

4 years ago

FILE - In this June 15, 2020, file photo Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson speaks during a roundtable with President Donald Trump about America's seniors, in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington. The Trump administration said Thursday, July 23, that it is revoking an Obama-era housing regulation designed to eliminate racial disparities in the suburbs. In a statement, Carson said the regulation known as Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, or the AFFH rule, was “unworkable and ultimately a waste of time for localities to comply with.” (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — It was supposed to be a scene of celebration.

Instead, the Trump campaign’s election night watch party in the White House East Room — with few masks and no social distancing — is being eyed as a potential coronavirus super-spreading event and yet another symbol of President Donald Trump’s cavalier attitude toward a virus that is ripping across the nation and infecting more than 100,000 people a day.

Ben Carson, the Secretary for Housing and Urban Development, is the latest attendee to test positive, a department spokesman confirmed. The event has been under scrutiny since another attendee, the president’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, contracted the virus, which has now killed more than 237,000 people in the U.S. alone.

Carson’s deputy chief of staff Coalter Baker said the secretary “is in good spirits” and “feels fortunate to have access to effective therapeutics which aid and markedly speed his recovery.”

The White House has repeatedly refused to say who else has tested positive, even as the virus continues to spread. The latest White House cluster, coming just a month after Trump’s own diagnosis and hospitalization, includes a top Trump campaign official as well as a handful of undisclosed White House staff, officials said.