Bill Maher tests positive for COVID-19

HBO’s Bill Maher has tested positive for COVID-19, despite being fully vaccinated, his show announced Thursday.

Maher’s show, “Real Time with Bill Maher,” said in a statement posted to Twitter that the host tested positive during a weekly testing of all employees. He is asymptomatic and “feels fine,” the statement said.

As a result of the positive test result, Maher will not tape his weekly show this Friday. The episode will be rescheduled at a later date.

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— Real Time with Bill Maher (@RealTimers) May 13, 2021

So-called breakthrough coronavirus cases like Maher’s have affected thousands of Americans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines a “breakthrough” coronavirus case as a COVID-19 infection that occurs after a person is fully vaccinated.

The CDC previously said that as of April 26, it had received 9,245 reports of breakthrough cases out of the more than 95 million people fully vaccinated.

According to the agency, 27 percent of individuals with breakthrough cases were asymptomatic. Nine percent of the breakthrough infections resulted in hospitalizations while 132 cases, or about 1 percent, resulted in death.

Maher, known for his liberal commentary on his HBO show, made headlines last week when he chastised the Democratic Party, saying Democrats have sucked “the fun out of everything.”

“Once upon a time, the right were the ones offended by everything. They were the party of speech codes and blacklists and moral panics and demanding some TV show had to go,” Maher said on his May 7 show.

“Well now that’s us. We’re the fun-suckers now. We suck the fun out of everything: Halloween, the Oscars, childhood, Twitter, comedy,” he added.