Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Monday that he’s not involved in the care of President Donald Trump but said he believes the president is getting high-level treatment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
“My colleagues that I know, including Sean Conley, are very good physicians, and they’re very qualified, so I am really confident that the president of the United States is getting the optimal care that you can get with the team over at Walter Reed,” Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CNN’s “New Day.”
Dr. Conley is the White House physician. He and Walter Reed doctors are caring for Trump following the president’s recent COVID-19 diagnosis.
COVID-19 is a disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
Trump could be discharged from Walter Reed as soon as Monday, doctors said during a press conference outside the Bethesda, Maryland, facility on Sunday. His health improved over the weekend, they said.
The White House said previously it was conducting contact tracing. Conley told reporters that the White House medical unit was collaborating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health departments in conducting the contact tracing, and the White House gave health authorities in New Jersey a list of 206 people who attended Trump’s fundraisers in Bedminister last week.
The term contact tracing refers to identifying people who came into contact with a person who tested positive for COVID-19. Contacts are advised to isolate themselves and get tested for COVID-19.
Michael Shear, a New York Times reporter who tested positive for the disease, told CNN earlier Monday that he had not been contacted as of yet.
Asked about the situation, Fauci said, “I don’t know what the process of the contact tracing is that’s going on at the White House, In general, the CDC is very much involved with the local authorities, so I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to comment about the contact tracing that’s gone on around the White House because I’m not informed on it.”
“But the one thing we do know is that when you get cases, if you have a situation where someone comes into contact and is infected, and you know that there are people around them, that the important public health measure is to do the identification, isolation, and contact tracing, so that you can get people who have been exposed to go into the appropriate quarantine, get tested, and do the things that are very clearly delineated in the CDC guidelines,” he added.
Patients with COVID-19 begin showing symptoms, if they ever develop symptoms, on average five days after being exposed to the CCP virus, Fauci said.
It’s generally safe for an infected person to resume going out around 10 days from the onset of symptoms, he added.
Trump was driven outside Walter Reed to wave to supporters on Sunday night.
The drive was cleared by his medical team, the White House said.
Asked about the drive, Fauci said, “I don’t want to really go there, John, and comment on that, okay?”
