President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump have tested positive for Covid-19, Trump announced in a tweet, joining a growing list of world leaders and officials to have contracted the disease while fighting to contain its spread.
KEY FACTS
Trump announced the positive test results on Twitter mere hours after close advisor Hope Hicks tested positive, while First Lady Melania Trump also tested positive for coronavirus; according to a statement from White House Physician Sean Conley, both are “well at this time, and they plan to remain home within the White House during their convalescence.”
Trump joins a growing list of world leaders and officials to have tested positive for coronavirus.
- Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro tested positive in July after months of downplaying the risks of the virus and dismissing it as “a little flu”; at the time of writing, Brazil’s coronavirus death toll of 144,000 is the second-highest in the world after the U.S.
- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was one of the first world leaders to announce he had caught the virus in March and was eventually admitted to a hospital ICU after suffering persistent symptoms.
- Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei tested positive for coronavirus in September after experiencing body aches and a dry cough; Reuters reports that Giammattei asked the entire cabinet to be tested, with the government later confirming that the minister for culture tested positive.
- Bolivia’s interim President Jeanine Añez caught the virus in July.
- After being diagnosed in June, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández spent over two weeks in a hospital after developing pneumonia symptoms.
- Having dismissed coronavirus as a mass “psychosis”, Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko claims he briefly caught the virus.
- The Armenian Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, and his family tested positive and recovered from the virus in June.
- In Guinea-Bissau, Prime Minister Nuno Gomes Nabiam and three ministers tested positive for Covid-19 in April.
- In March, Prince Albert II of Monaco became the first reigning monarch or head of state to announce a positive test result for the disease.
- In April, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin temporarily stepped down to recover from coronavirus.
-By Robert Hart, Forbes Staff