Neither man is experiencing any symptoms.
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The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Director Dr. Robert Redfield, will be going into self-quarantine Saturday due to “low risk exposure” to someone with the novel coronavirus.
Redfield will be entering self-quarantine less than a day after Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn said he would be isolating himself for similar reasons.
“CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield has been determined to have had a low risk exposure on May 6 to a person at the White House who has COVID-19,” the CDC said in a statement. “He is feeling fine, and has no symptoms. He will be teleworking for the next two weeks. In the event Dr. Redfield must go to the White House to fulfill any responsibilities as part of WHTF on COVID-19 he will be following CDC Safety Practices for Critical Infrastructure Workers Who May Have Had Exposure to a Person with Suspected or Confirmed COVID-19.”
“Those guidelines call for Dr. Redfield and anyone working on the Task Force at the WH to have their temperature taken and screened for symptoms each day, wear a face covering, and distance themselves from others,” the agency added.
An FDA spokeswoman confirmed Saturday morning that Hahn also came in contact with an individual who tested positive. As a result of that contact, he was tested but that came back negative.
He is in self-quarantine as well.
“As Dr. Hahn wrote in a note to staff yesterday, he recently came into contact with an individual who has tested positive for COVID-19,” the FDA said in a statement. “Per CDC guidelines, he is now in self-quarantine for the next two weeks. He immediately took a diagnostic test and tested negative for the virus.”
Both men will testify by video — “due to these unusual circumstances” — at Tuesday’s Senate Health Committee hearing about the government response to COVID-19.
“I asked the White House to allow Dr. Hahn and Dr. Redfield to testify by videoconference at this important hearing which is less than three days away,” Chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said in a statement. “I am grateful that White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, approved a one-time exception to the Administration’s policies about hearings, and has agreed that Dr. Hahn and Dr. Redfield will testify at this hearing by videoconference due to these unusual circumstances.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci will also be testifying at the hearing after the White House rejected a request for him to testify at a House hearing last week.
Hahn and Redfield would have regularly come in contact with Vice President Mike Pence and President Donald Trump in consulting with the White House coronavirus task force. Both men have been tested multiple times and come back negative, though it’s unclear if they’ve been tested again this weekend.
Trump said on Friday he would “probably” have another test after a military service member — a personal valet who had brought him Diet Cokes in the Oval Office — had tested positive.
Pence’s press secretary, Katie Miller, who’s married to top Trump policy adviser Stephen Miller, also was revealed to have tested positive for the coronavirus on Friday.
It is not clear who tested positive for coronavirus and came into contact with Redfield and Hahn.
