The latest on Trump's Covid-19 diagnosis

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, chief of the infectious diseases division at Massachusetts General Hospital, says the White House and federal government are not following policies that people in infection control live by, as they try to contain the Covid-19 pandemic.

Walensky noted that there are standard definitions and guidelines around quarantine, isolation and contact tracing.

Aside from testing and contact-tracing efforts around well-known figures at the White House, there are other essential workers there who would likely need to be contacted and tested – and that’s a lesson for communities outside the White House, too.

“I really think it’s key that we make sure that all communities have access to contact tracing, treatments and vaccines,” she said. 

Attorney General William Barr tested negative for Covid-19 on Wednesday, according to Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec. 

Kupec said Barr, who tested negative for the sixth time, is at the Justice Department for meetings Wednesday afternoon. 

The attorney general was among the guests at Trump's Rose Garden event late last month introducing Judge Amy Coney Barrett as his nominee to the US Supreme Court – an event which is now believed by many White House officials to be a nexus for contagion that led to the positive tests of at least seven attendees, including the President and first lady.

Barr was seen at the event without a mask, shaking hands and mingling with people in the crowd, including former White House adviser Kellyanne Conway who announced she had tested positive Friday. He also attended the private reception for Barrett afterward.

Sam Kass, former White House chef and adviser to first lady Michelle Obama, voiced his anger with the Trump administration’s handling of coronavirus as it relates to the White House residence staff.

In a four-minute Instagram video posted earlier Wednesday, Kass expressed his outrage following reports residence staff have been put in danger. 

After a report from the New York Times that two housekeeping staffers had tested positive and were asked to use discretion, Kass raised the possibility that other potential close contacts were not informed internally. 

“There were gaps in communication where people had no idea what was going on, and a lack of communication,” he said. 

In his opinion, both President Trump and first lady Melania Trump, who were both diagnosed with Covid-19 last week, should not be at the White House around residence staff “unequipped” to deal with infectious disease, and, rather, in the care of trained medical professionals. 

Kass outlined the potential for cross-contamination – even though the East Wing instituted a mask policy early in the pandemic, the West Wing did not. And residence staff are frequently around West Wing staff, setting up and breaking down events in the East Room and Rose Garden, among others. He said the dueling mask policies showed the administration’s “incompetence and hypocrisy.”

“It means they knew they should be in masks. That’s the policy in their home. They knew people should be testing frequently, if not daily. They let the rest of their staff be exposed without any rules, and how dare they,” he said.

Many of the workspaces used by residence staff are extremely small and have a potential for spread, including the pastry shop, which Kass said is “like a walk-in closet,” and “tiny little offices underground” including the engineers’ room, the carpentry shop, and the electricians’ office.

Kass said he was “horrified” by images of the President walking into the residence from the Truman Balcony without a mask after he returned from the hospital. 

He said he felt compelled to speak out because residence staff, with a long history of discretion, would not speak for themselves. 

“There’s a deep tradition in the residence of being credibly discreet and never speaking out, and I know they’re not going to,” he said. “The privacy of the first family, it’s tantamount. They would never violate that trust, even when their own lives are at risk.”

Watch more:

Regeneron, the company that makes the experimental treatment given to President Trump last week, told CNN their antibody treatment could have affected the blood test that shows Trump has antibodies to the coronavirus.

Earlier today the President’s physician, Dr. Sean Conley, released a memo on the President’s health. In it, he said Trump had "detectable levels" of coronavirus antibodies as of Monday. 

Trump received a single infusion of Regeneron’s dual monoclonal antibody treatment on Friday. The company said the IgG antibody test would have detected the engineered antibodies that were administered to Trump.

Those antibodies – laboratory versions of immune system proteins designed to home in directly on specific parts of the coronavirus – would remain detectable in his system for several months.

In a statement to CNN, Regeneron said:

The President’s physician Dr. Sean Conley has released a new memorandum on the President’s status, claiming President Trump has been “symptom-free for over 24 hours.”

Trump, Conley wrote, “has not needed nor received any supplemental oxygen since initial hospitalization,” and has been “fever-free for more than 4 days.”

Trump’s labs, Conley said, “demonstrated detectable levels of SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies from labs drawn Monday.”

Trump told him he feels “great!” Conley wrote, including an exclamation point. 

Conley has not briefed reporters since Monday.

Read the memo:

Both Vice President Mike Pence and second lady Karen Pence have tested negative for Covid-19 ahead of this evening’s debate, an administration official confirms. 

The Commission on Presidential Debate is still planning for the second presidential debate, co-chair of Frank Fahrenkopf said Wednesday. However, it’s not without concern. Everything depends on the President’s health status and whether people around him, including the commission’s crew, will be safe, he told CNN.

“We're going forward with our planning for both the second and final one in Nashville,” Fahrenkopf added. “We will make decisions and spend time after [the vice presidential debate] is in the can tonight as to what we're going to do for the next one, once we get that advice."

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said Tuesday that the second presidential debate should not be held if President Donald Trump is still infected with coronavirus, but that he would base his participation in the debate upon recommendations from medical experts.

Watch:

While President Trump has been downplaying the coronavirus pandemic, Julia Jimenez, a health care worker who has been treating coronavirus patients since the pandemic began, has been strained at work and at home.

The coronavirus has affected 17 members of her family.

“I [looked] at my patients every day, like I would hate it if that was my family member, and now it is.”

Meanwhile, Jimenez said she has been living in hotels since March and isolating from her parents and her son to reduce their risk of exposure to the virus.

“I don’t sleep very well. I’m very, very stressed,” she told CNN’s Miguel Marquez.

The President’s message to Americans about the pandemic only adds to it.

“I think we’re in big trouble and that it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better,” she said. “I think our country is in bad shape right now and they're getting really bad advice.”

With the President testing positive for the virus, she hopes that he will change his message.

Watch more:

Ahead of tonight’s Vice Presidential debate, Sen. Kamala Harris received a negative result after undergoing PCR testing for Covid-19 on Tuesday.

Polymerase chain reaction tests, known as PCR, are the most common and most accurate tests for determining whether someone is currently infected with the novel coronavirus.