Trump campaign reportedly didn't tell the Biden campaign about the president's diagnosis
President Trump's campaign reportedly did not contact the campaign of former Vice President Joe Biden regarding the president testing positive for COVID-19 following Tuesday's debate.
Trump confirmed in a tweet early on Friday that both he and first lady Melania Trump had tested positive for COVID-19, which came after Trump and Biden faced off in the first 2020 presidential debate on Tuesday evening. Citing a senior Biden campaign official, CNN reports that "there was no contact from the Trump campaign or the White House to alert the Biden campaign of possible exposure" to COVID-19.
PBS News' Yamiche Alcindor also confirmed as much, reporting that no contact took place between the campaigns and that Biden's team found out Trump had tested positive through news reports.
CONFIRMED: There was no contact from the Trump campaign or the White House to alert the Biden campaign of possible exposure. The campaign learned of the situation from the news reports, a Biden campaign aide tells me.
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) October 2, 2020
The aide to Biden told CNN that the campaign believes the risk of exposure is low because "we were never near them" at the event, where Trump's camp ignored a mandatory mask rule. Indeed, epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding previously explained that if Trump was infectious at Tuesday's debate, it still "would have been very low risk for Biden given the distance between them." Biden was reportedly expected to be tested for COVID-19 on Friday morning.
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