Trump met someone infected with coronavirus. He still has no plans to get tested

President Donald Trump has no plans to be tested for the coronavirus at this time, the White House said Thursday after a Brazilian official who was at Mar-a-Lago last weekend tested positive for COVID-19.

Trump stood next to Fabio Wajngarten, an aide to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, in a photograph that the aide posted on Instagram. Vice President Mike Pence, the leader of the president’s coronavirus task force, and Bolsonaro are also in that photo, which was posted after the Brazilian president met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s Florida resort, last Saturday.

Trump on Thursday told reporters he was “not concerned” about a report that the Bolsonaro aide had contracted the coronavirus.

White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement that neither Trump nor Pence required testing for the coronavirus because they are not exhibiting symptoms and neither of them planned to self-quarantine as a result of their contact with the infected person.

“Exposures from the case are being assessed, which will dictate next steps. Both the President and Vice President had almost no interactions with the individual who tested positive and do not require being tested at this time,” she said.

“To reiterate CDC guidelines, there is currently no indication to test patients without symptoms, and only people with prolonged close exposure to confirmed positive cases should self-quarantine,” Grisham said. “We are monitoring the situation closely and will update everyone as we get more information.”

The statement came as lawmakers who may have had contact with individuals who later tested positive — including Florida Sen. Rick Scott and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham — voluntarily went into self-quarantine out of caution.

More than half-a-dozen members of Congress in both chambers announced plans to self-quarantine. Trump has had contact with several lawmakers who found out later they had been exposed to the coronavirus.

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, both of whom had contact with Trump, self-quarantined after they learned that a person they had been around at a conference tested positive for the coronavirus. North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, who Trump announced would become his chief of staff, did the same after interacting with the person.

Meadows was present at the White House on Thursday as Trump met in the Oval Office with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar.

Answering a reporter’s question in the Oval Office about the Bolsonaro aide, Trump said he was aware of reports that Wajngarten had contracted the virus.

“We had dinner together in Florida in — at Mar-a-Lago, with the entire delegation. I don’t know if the press aide was there. If he was there, he was there,” Trump said.

The administration is assessing who at Mar-a-Lago had direct and frequent contact with Bolsonaro and his aide during the visit.

Despite sitting at the same table with the Brazilian president, Jared Kushner, a senior advisor to the president and Trump’s son-in-law, has no current plans to self-quarantine and has not displayed any symptoms, two White House officials said. Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, also attended the dinner.

Kushner in recent days has assumed a coordinating role between the president’s coronavirus task force, led by Pence, and other White House offices. “It’s taken up a large percentage of his time over the last few days and became the main priority,” one official said. “He’s leaning on the advice of experts.”

As the number of COVID-19 cases increased in the United States, the president announced new travel restrictions for Europe in a Wednesday night address to the nation.

New measures were put in place in the nation’s capital to keep the virus from spreading. The House and Senate sergeants-at-arms halted tours of the U.S. Capitol for three weeks. Tours of the White House were also postponed indefinitely.

Large group gatherings for the month of March at the White House have also been postponed or canceled, a White House official told McClatchy.

That means events honoring sports teams like the Kansas City Chiefs, the 2020 Super Bowl champions, will not take place until April, at the earliest. No date for the event has been set.

White House officials who are ill have been told to stay home, the official said. White House staff have been told to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance on coronavirus prevention measures. No one at the White House who came in contact with the lawmakers who are self-quarantining had been asked to self-quarantine as of Thursday morning.

Trump has called off his own travel, at least for this week, canceling a scheduled appearance at a conference in Nevada. His campaign said a “Catholics for Trump” event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, planned for March 19 would be postponed.

In the Oval Office, the president said that another campaign event, in Tampa, Florida, is likely to be canceled, too.

“We have a big one in Tampa, all sold out. We have over 100,000 requests for tickets, but I think we’ll probably not do it because people would say it’s better to not do,” he told reporters. “You know, we need a little separation until such time as this goes away. It’s going to go away. It’s going to go away.”

The Capitol complex will be closed to the public as of 5 p.m. on March 12, through 8 a.m. on April 1. Members of Congress, congressional staff and journalists will still have access.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced that senators would return to work on Monday rather than take a week-long recess. Several senators made clear they intended to go home over the weekend before returning to work at the Capitol, in many cases traveling on airplanes.

An increasing number of lawmakers also announced they would close their Washington, D.C., offices and allow staff to telework, particularly after the Wednesday evening announcement of the first reported case of coronavirus on Capitol Hill — an aide to Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.

Congressional Correspondent Emma Dumain and White House Correspondent Michael Wilner contributed reporting.