The assistant commandant of the Marine Corps has tested positive for the coronavirus, days after he and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were in a Pentagon meeting with a Coast Guard leader who was infected with the virus.
The Marine Corps said today that Gen. Gary L. Thomas, tested positive for COVID-19.
He attended a meeting of the Joint Chiefs on Friday, when the commandant was not able to be there. U.S. officials said none of the other top military leaders in the meeting — including Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — have so far tested positive.
Thomas and the others have been in self-quarantine since Tuesday when they found out that Adm. Charles W. Ray, the vice commandant of the Coast Guard who was at the meeting, had tested positive.
The coronavirus outbreak has now infected “34 White House staffers and other contacts” in recent days, according to an internal government memo, an indication that the disease has spread among more people than previous known in the seat of American government.
Dated today and obtained by ABC News, the memo was distributed among senior leadership at FEMA, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security and the agency responsible for managing the continuing national response to the public health disaster.
The memo also notes that a senior adviser to the president is among those infected.
Hope Hicks and Stephen Miller, both senior aides to the president, have tested positive in recent days.
A top White House security official, Crede Bailey, is gravely ill with Covid-19 and has been hospitalized since September, Bloomberg reports.
The White House has not publicly disclosed Bailey’s illness.
The new figures underscore both the growing crisis in the White House and the lengths to which government officials have gone to block information about the outbreak’s spread.
ABC News had previously reported that a total of 24 White House aides and their contacts had contracted the virus.
It was not clear in the FEMA memo with the larger number what “other contacts” referred to.
When President Trump returned to the White House on Tuesday, he immediately removed his mask before entering the building — setting off concern that his behavior may put staffers, complex workers and Secret Service agents at risk.
On Tuesday, White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah said the White House was “taking precautions” to stem the spread and that those still working in the West Wing “feel comfortable.”
But today, images emerged showing several White House aides interacting in close proximity with one another without masks.
Trump asserts in a new video that its a “blessing from God” that he caught COVID-19 because he now sees the benefit of therapeutic medicines and claims he will provide them “free” and says he considers them a “cure” — a statement which is not scientifically supported.